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3 


WORKS 


OF 

CHARLES DICKENS. 


HOUSEHOLD EDITION. 


ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY F. 0. C. DARLEY AND 
JOHN GILBERT. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 



NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON, 
459 Broome Street. 

1866. 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
H. 0. Houghton and Company, 

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 


riverside, Cambridge: 


STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 



PREFACE. 


These papers have been received with very great 
favor by the Public, and are here reprinted in a conven- 
ient form. The Series is, for the time, complete ; but it 
is the Uncommercial Traveller’s intention to take to the 
road again before another winter sets in. 

December , 1860. 





































































♦ 


















v 




























































.* 













































































































































































































































CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. His General Line of Business 9 

II. The Shipwreck 11 

III. Wapping Workhouse 31 

IV. Two Views of a Cheap Theatre .... 47 

V. Poor Mercantile Jack 62 

VI. Refreshments for Travellers .... 79 

VII. Travelling Abroad 91 

VIII. The Great Tasmania’s Cargo .... 108 

IX. City of London Churches 121 

X. Shy Neighborhoods 136 

XI. Tramps 150 

XII. Dullborough Town 167 

XIII. Night Walks 182 

XIV. Chambers 195 

XV. Nurse’s Stories 212 

XVI. Arcadian London . 227 

XVII. The Italian Prisoner 240 



♦ 
































- 





. 











THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


I. 


HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS. 

Allow me to introduce myself — first negatively. 

No landlord is my friend and brother, no chamber-maid 
loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and 
envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is ex- 
pressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made 
for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to 
me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and rail- 
way wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public 
entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for 
my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon 
my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in 
the bill ; when I come home from my journeys, I neyer 
get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and 
should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle 
•a man into ordering something he does n’t want. As a 
town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle 
externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and 
internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes 
are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am 
rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encoun- 
tered by a pleasure-train, waiting on the platform of a 


10 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light 
Stonehenge of samples. 

And yet — proceeding now, to introduce myself posi- 
tively — I am both a town traveller and a country trav- 
eller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speak- 
ing, I travel for the great house of Human Interest 
Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy 
goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering 
here and there from my rooms in Co vent Garden, Lon- 
don, — now about the city streets, now about the country 
by-roads, — seeing many little things, and some great 
things, which, because they interest me, I think may 
interest others. 

These are my brief credentials as the Uncommercial 
Traveller. 


A BAY ON THE COAST OF WALES. 


11 


n. 


THE SHIPWRECK. 

Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, 
under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and 
fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly its 
end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning. 

So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in 
the bright light of the sun, and under the transparent 
shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the 
bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was 
that very day. The Tug-steamer lying a little off 
the shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, 
the boat alongside the Lighter, the regularly turning 
windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at 
work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down 
with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as much 
a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. 
The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two 
hours and a half ; there was a slight obstruction in the 
sea within a few yards of my feet : as if the stump of 
a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it from ly- 
ing horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from 
the land — and as I stood upon the beach and observed 
it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast 
a stone over it. 

So orderly, so quiet, so regular, — the rising and 
! falling of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat, 


12 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


— tlie turning of the windlass, — the coming in of 
the tide, — that I, myself, seemed, to my own think- 
ing, anything but new to the spot. Yet I had never 
seen it in my life, a minute before, and had trav- 
ersed two hundred miles to get at it. That very 
morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, 
hill-country roads ; looking back at snowy summits ; 
meeting courteous peasants, well to do, driving fat 
pigs and cattle to market; noting the neat and thrifty 
dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white 
linen, drying on the bushes ; having windy weather 
suggested by every cotter’s little rick, with its thatched 
straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping 
compartments, like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not 
given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast- Guardsman 
(kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, 
and had we not just now parted company ? So it was ; 
but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid 
sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment 
nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the 
sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water 
with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass 
aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very 
near my feet. 

0 reader, haply turning this page by the fireside 
at Home and hearing the night-wind rumble in the 
chimney, that slight obstruction was the uppermost 
fragment of the wreck of the Royal Charter, Austra- 
lian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that 
struck here on the terrible morning of the twenty- 
sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went 
down with her treasure of at least five hundred 
human lives, and has never stirred since ! 


BLOWN OUT OF BED. 


13 


From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, 
stern foremost ; on which side, or on which, she passed 
the little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be 
aground certain yards outside her ; these are rendered 
bootless questions by the darkness of that night and 
the darkness of death. Here she went down. 

Even as I stood on the beach, with the words 
“ Here she went down ! ” in my ears, a diver in his 
grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the 
boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. 
On the shore by the water’s edge was a rough tent, 
made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and 
workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had 
kept Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the 
destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among 
the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars 
of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the 
fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The timber 
was already bleached and iron rusted, and even these 
objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole 
scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years 
and years. 

, Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, 
living on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being 
blown out of bed at about daybreak by the wind that 
i had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a 
| ladder with his nearest neighbor to construct some 
| temporary device for keeping his house over his head, 
saw from the ladder’s elevation as he looked down by 
chance towards the shore, some dark, troubled object 
| close in with the land. And he and the other, de- 
scending to the beach, and finding the sea mercilessly 
1 beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up 


14 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which 
the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs 
on boughs, and had given the alarm. And so, over 
the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down the gul- 
lies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scat- 
tered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of 
Wales had come running to the dismal sight — their 
clergyman among them. And as they stood in the 
leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning hard against 
the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the sleet 
and spray rushed at them from the ever fo ming and 
dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was 
a part of the vessel’s cargo blew in with the salt foam 
and remained upon the land when the foam melted, they 
saw the ship’s life-boat put off from one of the heaps of 
wreck; and first, there were three men in her, and in 
a moment she capsized, and there were but two ; and 
again she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there 
was but one ; and again, she was thrown bottom upward, 
and that one, with his arm struck through the broken 
planks and waving as if for the help that could never 
reach him, went down into the deep. 

It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard 
this, while I stood on the shore, looking in his kind 
wholesome face, as it turned to the spot where the 
boat had been. The divers were down then, and busy. 
They were “ lifting ” to-day, the gold found yesterday, 
— some five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Of three 
hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold, 
three hundred thousand pounds’ worth, in round num- 
bers, was at that time recovered. The great bulk of 
the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. 
Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; 


THE BODIES OF THE DROWNED. 


15 


indeed, at first sovereigns had drifted in with the 
sand, and been scattered far and wide over the beach, 
like sea-shells ; but most other golden treasure would 
be found. As it was brought up, it went aboard the 
Tug - steamer, where good account was taken of it. 
So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it 
broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of 
gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid 
iron-work : in which, also, several loose sovereigns that 
the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as 
firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid 
when they were forced there. It had been remarked 
of such bodies come ashore, too, as had been seen by 
scientific men, that they had been stunned to death, 
and not suffocated. Observation, both of the internal 
change that had been wrought in them, and of their 
external expression, showed death to have been thus 
merciful and easy. The report was brought, while I 
was holding such discourse on the beach, that no more 
bodies had come ashore since last night. It began to 
be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown 
up, until the northeast winds of the early spring set in. 
Moreover, a great number of the passengers, and par- 
ticularly the second-class women-passengers, were known 
to have been in the middle of the ship when she parted, 
and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon 
them after yawning open, and would keep them down. 
A diver made known, even then, that he had come upon 
the body of a man, and had sought to release it from 
a great superincumbent weight ; but that, finding he 
could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had 
left it where it was. 

It was the kind* and wholesome face I have made 


16 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


mention of as being then beside me, that I had purposed 
to myself to see, when I left home for Wales. I had 
heard of that clergyman, as having buried many scores 
of the shipwrecked people ; of his having opened his 
house and heart to their agonized friends ; of his having 
used a most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and 
weeks, in the performance of the forlornest offices that 
Man can render to his kind ; of his having most tender- 
ly and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead, and to 
those who were sorrowing for the dead. I had said to 
myself, “ In the Christmas season of the year, I should 
like to see that man ! ” And he had swung the gate of 
his little garden, in coming out to meet me, not half an 
hour ago. 

So cheerful of spirit, and guiltless of affectation, as 
true practical Christianity ever is ! I read more of 
the New Testament in the fresh frank face going up 
the village beside me, in five minutes, than I have 
read in anathematizing discourses (albeit put to press 
with enormous flourishing of trumpets) in all my life. 
I heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice 
that had ^nothing to say about its owner, than in all 
the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever 
blown conceit at me. 

We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery 
pace, among the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet, 
coarse grass, the outlying water, and other obstructions 
from which frost and snow had lately thawed. It 
was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the 
way) to suppose that the peasantry had shown any 
superstitious avoidance of the drowned ; on the whole, 
they had done very well, and had assisted readily. 
Ten shillings had been paid for the bringing of each 


LLANALLGO CHURCH. 


17 


body up to the church, but the way was steep, and a 
horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) 
were necessary, and three or four men, and, all things 
considered, it was not a great price. The people were 
none the richer for the wreck, for it was the season of 
the herring-shoal — and who could cast nets for fish, and 
find dead men and women in the draught? ‘ 

He had the church-keys in his hand, and opened the 
churchyard gate, and opened the church-door ; and we 
went in. 

It is a little church of great antiquity ; there is reason 
to believe that some church has occupied the spot, these 
thousand years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other 
things usually belonging to the church were gone, owing 
to its living congregation having deserted it for the neigh- 
boring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead. The 
very Commandments had been shouldered out of their 
places, in the bringing in of the dead ; the black wooden 
tables* on which they were painted, were askew, and on 
the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pave- 
ment all over the church, were the marks and stains 
where the drowned had been laid down. The eye, with 
little or no aid from the imagination, could yet see how 
the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been 
and where the feet. Some faded traces of the wreck of 
the Australian ship may be discernible on the stone pave- 
ment of this little church, hundreds of years hence, when 
the digging for gold in Australia shall have long and long 
ceased out of the land. 

Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at 
one time, awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wail- 
ing in every room of his house, my companion worked 
alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could 

2 s 


18 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him ; 
patiently examining the tattered clothing; cutting off 
buttons, hair, marks from linen, anything that might lead 
to subsequent identification ; studying faces, looking for 
a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters 
sent to him with the ruin about him. “My dearest 
brother had bright gray eyes and a pleasant smile,” one 
sister wrote. 0 poor sister ! well for you to be far from 
here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him ! 

The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two 
sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies often. It grew 
to be the business of their lives to do so. Any new ar- 
rival of a bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to 
compare the description brought with the dread realities. 
Sometimes they would go back, able to say, “ I have 
found him,” or, “ I think she lies there.” Perhaps the 
mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the 
church, would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the 
spot with many compassionate words, and encouraged to 
look, she would say, with a piercing cry, “ This is my 
boy ! ” and drop insensible on the insensible figure. 

He soon observed that in some cases of women the 
identification of persons, though complete, was quite at 
variance with the marks upon the linen ; this led him to 
notice that even the marks upon the linen were some- 
times inconsistent with one another ; and thus he came 
to understand that they had dressed in great haste and 
agitation, and that their clothes had become mixed to- 
gether. The identification of men by their dress was 
rendered extremely difficult in consequence of a large 
proportion of them being dressed alike, — in clothes of 
one kind, that is to say, supplied by slopsellers and out- 
fitters, and not made by single garments, but by hundreds. 


THE CHURCHYARD. 


19 


Many of the men were bringing over parrots, and had 
receipts upon them for the price of the birds ; others had 
bills of exchange in their pockets, or in belts. Some of 
these documents, carefully nn wrinkled and dried, were 
little less fresh in appearance that day than the present 
page will be under ordinary circumstances, after having 
been opened three or four times. 

In that lonely place it had not been easy to obtain 
even such common commodities in towns as ordinary 
disinfectants. Pitch had been burnt in the church, as 
the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan in which 
it had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, 
with its ashes. Hard by the Communion-Table were 
some boots that had been taken off the drowned and 
preserved — a gold-digger’s boot, cut down the leg for its 
removal — a trodden-down man’s ankle-boot with a buff 
cloth top — and others — soaked and sandy, weedy and 
salt. 

From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. 
Here there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five 
bodies, that had come ashore from the wreck. He had 
buried them, when not identified, in graves containing 
four each. He had numbered each body in a register 
describing it, and had placed a corresponding number 
on each coffin, and over each grave. Identified bodies 
he had buried singly, in private graves, in another part 
of the churchyard. Several bodies had been exhumed 
from the graves of four, as relatives had come from a 
distance and seen his register ; and, when recognized, 
these have been reburied in private graves, so that the 
mourners might erect separate headstones over the re- 
mains. In all such cases he had performed the funeral 
service a second time, and the ladies of his house had 


20 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


attended. There had been no offence in the poor ashes 
when they were brought again to the light of day ; the 
beneficent Earth had already absorbed it. The drowned 
were buried in their clothes. To supply the great sudden 
demand for coffins, he had got all the neighboring people, 
handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday 
likewise. The coffins were neatly formed ; — I had seen 
two, waiting for occupants, under the lee of the ruined 
walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call of the tent 
where the Christmas Feast was held. Similarly, one of 
the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the 
churchyard. So much of the scanty space was already 
devoted to the wrecked people, that the villagers had 
begun to express uneasy doubts whether they themselves 
could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and 
descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a 
step from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to 
the latter ; the white surplice was hanging up near the 
door, ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral ser- 
vice. 

The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian min- 
ister was as consolatory as the circumstances out of 
which it shone were sad. I never have seen anything 
more delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by 
himself and his household of all they had undergone, 
as a simple duty that was quietly done and ended. 
In speaking of it, they spoke of it with great com- 
passion for the bereaved ; but laid no stress upon their 
own hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had 
attached many people to them as friends, and elicited 
many touching expressions of gratitude. This clergy- 
man’s brother — himself the clergyman of two adjoining 
parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in 


THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 


21 


his own churchyard, and who had done to them all 
that his brother had done as to the larger number — 
must be understood as included in the family. He 
was there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made 
no more account of his trouble than anybody else did. 
Down to yesterday’s post outward, my clergyman alone 
had written one thousand and seventy -five letters to 
relatives and friends of the lost people. In the absence 
of self-assertion, it was only through my now and then 
delicately putting a question as the occasion arose, that 
I became informed of these things. It was only when 
I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the 
awful nature of the scene of death he had been required 
so closely to familiarize himself with for the soothing 
of the living, that he had casually said, without the 
least abatement of his cheerfulness, “indeed, it had 
rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more 
than a little coffee now and then, and a piece of 
bread.” 

In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, 
in this serene avoidance of the least attempt to “ im- 
prove” an occasion which might be supposed to have 
sunk of its own weight into my heart, I seemed to 
have happily come, in a few steps, from the church- 
yard with its open grave, which was the type of 
Death, to the Christian dwelling, side by side with it, 
•which was the type of Resurrection. I never shall 
think of the former, without the latter. The two will 
always rest side by side in my memory. If I had lost 
any one dear to me in this unfortunate ship, if I had 
made a voyage from Australia to look at the grave in 
the churchyard, I should go away, thankful to God that 
that house was so close to it, and that its shadow by 


22 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


day and its domestic lights by night fell upon the earth 
in which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear one’s 
head. 

The references that naturally arose out of our con- 
versation, to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked 
persons, and to the gratitude of relations and friends, 
made me very anxious to see some of those letters. 
I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers, 
all bordered with black, and from them I made the 
following few extracts. 

A mother writes : 

Reverend Sir. Amongst the many who perished 
on your shore was numbered my beloved son. I was 
only just recovering from a severe illness, and this 
fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I am 
unable at present to go to identify the remains of the 
loved and lost. My darling son would have been six- 
teen on Christmas-day next. He was a most amiable 
and obedient child, early taught the way of salvation. 
We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he might 
be an ornament to his profession, but, “ it is well ; ” I 
feel assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed. 
Oh, he did not wish to go this last voyage ! On the 
fifteenth of October, I received a letter from him from 
Melbourne, date August twelfth ; he wrote in high 
spirits, and in conclusion he says : “ Pray for a fair 
breeze, dear mamma, and I ’ll not forget to whistle for 
it ! and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my 
little pets again. Good-by, dear mother — good-by, 
dearest parents. Good-by, dear brother.” Oh, it was 
indeed an eternal farewell. I do not apologize for thus 
writing you, for oh, my heart is so very sorrowful. 


AFFECTING LETTERS. 


23 


A husband writes: 

My dear kind Sir. Will you kindly inform me 
whether there are any initials upon the ring and guard 
you have in possession, found, as the “ Standard ” says, 
last Tuesday? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say 
that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words 
sufficiently for your kindness to me on that fearful 
and appalling day. Will you tell me what I can do 
for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to 
prevent my mind from going astray? 

A widow writes : 

Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I 
thought it best that my dear husband should be buried 
where he lies, and, much as I should have liked to 
have had it otherwise, I must submit. I feel, from 
all I have heard of you, that you will see it done de- 
cently and in order. Little does it signify to us, when 
the soul has departed, where this poor body lies, but 
we who are left behind would do all we can to show 
how we loved them. This is denied me, but it is 
God’s hand that afflicts us, and I try to submit. Some 
day I may be able to visit the spot, and see where he 
lies, and erect a simple stone to his memory. Oh! it 
will be long, long before I forget that dreadful night! 
Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop hi 
Bangor, to which I could send for a small picture of 
Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred to 
me ? 

Another widow writes : 

I have received your letter this morning, and do 
thank you most kindly for the interest you have taken 


24 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


about my dear husband, as well for the sentiments 
yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian who 
can sympathize with those who, like myself, are bro- 
ken down with grief. 

May God bless and sustain you, and all in connec- 
tion with you, in this great trial. Time may roll on 
and bear all its sons away, but your name as a disin- 
terested person will stand in history, and, as successive 
years pass, many a widow will think of your noble con- 
duct, and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, 
the tribute of a thankful heart, when other things are 
forgotten forever. 

A father writes : 

I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express 
my gratitude to you for your kindness to my son 
Richard upon the melancholy occasion of his visit to 
his dear brother’s body, and also for your ready atten- 
tion in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over 
my poor unfortunate son’s remains. God grant that 
your prayers over him may reach the Mercy-Seat, 
and that his soul may be received (through Christ’s 
intercession) into heaven ! 

His dear mother begs me to convey to you her 
heartfelt thanks. 

Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, 
write thus, after leaving it: 

Dear and never-to-be-forgotten Friends. I 
arrived here yesterday morning without accident, and 
am about to proceed to my home by railway. 

I am overpowered when I think of you and your hos- 


LETTERS CONTINUED. 


25 


pitable home. No words could speak language suited 
to my heart. I refrain. God reward you with the same 
measure you have meted with! 

I enumerate no names, but embrace you all. 

My beloved Friends. This is the first day that 
I have been able to leave my bedroom since I re- 
turned, which will explain the reason of my not writ- 
ing sooner. 

If I could only have had my last melancholy hope 
realized in recovering the body of my beloved and 
lamented son, I should have returned home somewhat 
comforted, and I think I could then have been com- 
paratively resigned. 

I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn 
as one without hope. 

The only consolation to my distressed mind is in 
having been so feelingly allowed by you to leave the 
matter in your hands, by whom I well know that 
everything will be done that can be, according to ar- 
rangements . made before I left the scene of the awful 
catastrophe, both as to the identification of my dear son, 
and also his interment. 

I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh 
has transpired since I left you ; will you add another 
to the many deep obligations I am under to you by 
writing to me? And, should the body of my dear 
and unfortunate son be identified, let me hear from 
you immediately, and I will come again. 

Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to 
you all for your benevolent aid, your kindness, and your 
sympathy. 


26 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


My dearly beloved Friends. I arrived in 
safety at my house yesterday, and a night’s rest has 
restored and tranquillized me. I must again repeat, 
that language has no words by which I can express my 
sense of obligation to you. You are enshrined in my 
heart of hearts. 

I have seen him ! and can now realize my misfor- 
tune more than I have hitherto been able to do. Oh, 
the bitterness of the cup I drink ! But I bow submis- 
sive. God must have done right. I do not want to 
feel less, but to acquiesce more simply. 

There were some Jewish passengers on board the 
Royal Charter, and the gratitude of the Jewish people 
is feelingly expressed in the following letter, bearing 
date from a the office of the Chief Babbi ” : 

Reverend Sir. I cannot refrain from expressing 
to you my heartfelt thanks on behalf of those of my 
flock whose relatives have unfortunately been among 
those who perished at the late wreck of the Boyal 
Charter. You have, indeed, like Boaz, “ not left off 
your kindness to the living and the dead.” 

You have not alone acted kindly towards the living 
by receiving them hospitably at your house, and energet- 
ically assisting them in their mournful duty, but also 
towards the dead, by exerting yourself to have our co- 
religionists buried in our ground, and according to our 
rites. May our heavenly Father reward you for your 
acts of humanity and true philanthropy ! 

The “Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool” thus 
express themselves through their secretary : 


DEAD SECRETS. 


27 


Reverend Sir. The wardens of this congregation 
have learned w r ith great pleasure that, in addition to 
those indefatigable exertions, at the scene of the late 
disaster to the Royal Charter, which have received 
universal recognition, you have very benevolently em- 
ployed your valuable efforts to assist such members 
of our faith as have sought the bodies of lost friends 
to give them burial in our consecrated grounds, with 
the observances and rites prescribed by the ordinances 
of our religion. 

The wardens desire me to take the earliest avail- 
able opportunity to offer to you, on behalf of our com- 
munity, the expression of their warm acknowledgments 
and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for your 
continued welfare and prosperity. 

A Jewish gentleman writes : 

Reverend and dear Sir. I take the opportunity of 
thanking you right earnestly for the promptness you dis- 
played in answering my note with full particulars con- 
cerning my much lamented brother, and I also herein 
beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness 
you displayed and for the facility you afforded for 
getting the remains of my poor brother exhumed. It 
has been to us a most sorrowful and painful event, 
but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in 
a measure, somehow or other, abates that mental an- 
guish, and makes the suffering so much easier to be 
borne. Considering the circumstances connected with 
my poor brother’s fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard 
one. He had been away in all seven years ; he re- 
turned four years ago to see his family. He was 
then engaged to a very amiable young lady. He had 


28 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


been very successful abroad, and was now returning to 
fulfil his sacred vow ; he brought all his property with 
him in gold, uninsured. We heard from him when the 
ship stopped at Queenstown, when he was in the highest 
of hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was 
washed away. 

Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for 
quotation here, were the numerous references to those 
miniatures of women worn round the necks of rough 
men (and found there after death), those locks of hair, 
those scraps of letters, those many, many slight memo- 
rials of hidden tenderness. One man cast up by the sea 
bore about him, printed on a perforated lace-card, the 
following singular (and unavailing) charm : 

A BLESSING. 

May the blessing of God await thee. May the 
sun of glory shine around thy bed ; and may the gates 
of plenty, honor, and happiness be ever open to thee. 
May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief dis- 
turb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy 
cheek, and the pleasures of imagination attend thy 
dreams ; and when length of years makes thee tired of 
earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes 
around thy last sleep of human existence, may the 
Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care that the 
expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude blast 
to hasten on its extinction. 

A sailor had these devices on his right arm : “ Our 

Saviour on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix 
and the vesture stained red ; on the lower part of the 


FAREWELL TO THE GOOD FAMILY. 


29 


arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross, 
the appearance of a half moon, with a face ; on the 
other side, the sun ; on the top of the Cross, the let- 
ters I.H.S. ; on the left arm, a man and woman dan- 
cing, with an effort to delineate the female’s dress ; 
under which, initials.” Another seaman “had, on the 
lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and 
a female ; the man holding the Union Jack with a 
streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and 
the end of it was held in her hand. On the upper 
part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, 
with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one 
large star on the side in Indian ink. On the left arm, 
a flag, a true lovers’ knot, a face, and initials.” This 
tattooing was found still plain, below the discolored outer 
surface of a mutilated arm, when such surface was care- 
fully scraped away with a knife. It is not improbable 
that the perpetuation of this marking custom among sea- 
men, may be referred back to their desire to be iden- 
tified, if drowned and flung ashore. 

It was some time before I could sever myself from 
the many interesting papers on the table, and then I 
broke bread and drank wine with the kind family 
before I left them. As I brought the Coast-guard 
down, so I took the Postman back, with his leathern 
wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and terrier dog. Many 
a heart-broken letter had he brought to the Rectory 
House within two months; many a benignantly pains- 
taking answer had he carried back. 

As I rode along, I thought of the many people, 
inhabitants of this mother - country, who would make 
pilgrimages to the little churchyard in the years to 
come; I thought of the many people in Australia, 


30 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


wlio would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and 
would find their way here when they visit the Old 
World ; I thought of the writers of all the wreck of 
letters I had left upon the table ; and I resolved to 
place this little record where it stands. Convocations, 
Conferences, ‘Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do a 
great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send 
they may ! but I doubt if they will ever do their Mas- 
ter’s service half so well, in all the time they last, as 
the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon 
the rugged coast of Wales. 

Had I lost the friend of my life in the wreck of 
the Royal Charter ; had I lost my betrothed, the more 
than friend of my life ; had I lost my maiden daugh- 
ter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little 
child ; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily 
and gently in the church, and say, “ None better could 
have touched the form, though it had lain at home.” 
I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it: I 
could be content to leave the grave near the house the 
good family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, 
in the little churchyard where so many are so strangely 
brought together. 

Without the name of the clergyman to whom — I 
hope, not without carrying comfort to some heart at 
some time — I have referred, my reference would be as 
nothing. He is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, 
of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the 
Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos Alligwy. 


STROLLING EASTWARD. 


31 


III. 

WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 

My day’s no-business beckoning me to the East end 
of London, I bad turned my face to that point of the 
metropolitan compass on leaving Covent Garden, and 
had got past the India House, thinking in my idle man- 
ner of Tippoo - Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got 
past my little wooden midshipman, after affectionately 
patting him on one leg of his knee-shorts for old ac- 
quaintance’ sake, and had got past Aldgate Pump, and 
had got past the Saracen’s Head (with an ignominious 
rash of posting-bills disfiguring his swarthy counten- 
ance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his an- 
cient neighbor the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who 
departed this life I don’t know when, and whose coaches 
are all gone I don’t know where ; and I had come out 
again into the age of railways, and I had got past 
Whitechapel Church, and was — rather inappropriately 
for an Uncommercial Traveller — in the Commercial 
Road. Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud of 
that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles 
of building belonging to the sugar - refiners, the little 
masts and vanes in small back gardens in back streets, 
the neighboring canals and docks, the India- vans lumber- 
ing along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers’ 
shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sex- 


32 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tants and quadrants, that I should have bought a few 
cheap if I had the least notion how to use them, I 
at last began to file off to the right, towards Wap- 
ping. 

Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old 
Stairs, or that I was going to look at the locality, 
because I believe (for I don’t) in the constancy of the 
young woman who told her sea-going lover, to such 
a beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the 
same, since she gave him the ’baccer-box marked with 
his name; I am afraid he usually got the worst of 
those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, 
I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern police- 
magistrate had said, through the morning papers, that 
there was no classification at the Wapping workhouse 
for women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame 
and divers other hard names, and because I wished to 
see how the fact really stood. For, that Eastern police- 
magistrates are not always the wisest men of the East, 
may be inferred from their course of procedure respect- 
ing the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. 
George’s in that quarter : which is usually, to discuss 
the matter at issue, in a state of mind betokening the 
weakest perplexity, with all parties concerned and un- 
concerned, and, for a final expedient, to consult the 
complainant as to what he thinks ought to be done 
with the defendant, and take the defendant’s opinion 
as to what he would recommend to be done with him- 
self. 

Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up 
as having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the 
narrow streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on 
predestination to bring me somehow or other to the 


MR. BAKER’S TRAP. 


83 


place I wanted, if I were ever to get there. When 
I had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble 
about the matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge, 
looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water. 
Over against me stood a creature remotely in the like- 
ness of a young man, with a puffed, sallow face, and a 
figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have 
been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, 
or the drowned man about whom there was a placard 
on the granite post like a large thimble, that stood be- 
tween us. 

I asked this apparition what it called the place? 
Unto which it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound 
like gurgling water in its throat : 

“Mister Baker’s trap.” 

As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on 
such occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure 
of the conversation, I deeply considered the meaning 
of this speech, while I eyed the apparition — then 
engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar 
at the top of the locks. Inspiration suggested to me 
that Mr. Baker was the acting Coroner of that neigh- 
borhood. 

“ A common place for suicide,” said I, looking down 
at the locks. 

“ Sue ? ” returned the ghost, with a stare. “ Yes ! 
And Poll. Likeways Emly. And Nancy. And Jane ; ” 
i he sucked the iron between each name ; “ and all the 
bileing. Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, 
and headers down here, they doos. Always a headerin’ 
down here, they is. Like one o’clock.” 

“And at about that hour of the morning, I sup- 
pose ? ” 


3 


84 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ Ah ! ” said the apparition. “ They an’t partickler. 
Two ’ull do for them . Three. All times o’ night. 
O’ny mind you ! ” Here the apparition rested his 
profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic manner. 
“ There must be somebody cornin’. They don’t go a 
headerin’ down here, wen there an’t no Bobby nor 
gen’ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.” 

According to my interpretation of these words, I 
was myself a General Cove, or member of the mis- 
cellaneous public. In which modest character, I re- 
marked : 

“ They are often taken out, are they, and restored ? ” 

“ I dunno about restored,” said the apparition, who, 
for some occult reason, very much objected to that 
word ; “ they ’re carried into the werkiss and put into 
a ’ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno about re- 
stored,” said the apparition ; “ blow that ! ” — and van- 
ished. 

As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was 
not sorry to find myself alone, especially as the “ werk- 
iss” it had indicated with a twist of its matted head, 
was close at hand. So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible trap 
(baited with a scum that was like the soapy rinsing of 
sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the work- 
house gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite 
unknown. 

A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch 
of keys in her hand, responded to my request to see 
the House. I began to doubt whether the police magis- 
trate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed her 
quick active little figure and her intelligent eyes. 

The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the 
worst first. He was welcome to see everything. Such 
as it was, there it all was. 


FOUL WARDS. 


35 


This was the only preparation for our entering “ the 
Foul wards.” They were in an old building, squeezed 
away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached 
from the more modern and spacious main body of the 
workhouse. They were in a building most monstrous- 
ly behind the time, — a mere series of garrets or lofts, 
with every inconvenient and objectionable circumstance 
in their construction, and only accessible by steep and 
narrow staircases, infamously ill adapted for the pas- 
sage up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of the dead. 

Abed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, 
there (for a change, as I understood it) on the floor, 
were women in every stage of distress and disease. 
None but those who have attentively observed such 
scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of ex- 
pression still latent under the general monotony and 
uniformity of color, attitude, and condition. The form 
a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had 
turned its back on this world forever ; the uninterested 
face at once lead-colored and yellow, looking passively 
upward from the pillow ; the haggard mouth a little 
dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indif- 
ferent, so light, and yet so heavy ; these were on every 
pallet ; but, when I stopped beside a bed, and said ever 
so slight a word to the figure lying there, the ghost of 
the old character came into the face, and made the Foul 
ward as various as the fair world. No one appeared 
to care to live, but no one complained ; all who could 
speak, said that as much was done for them as could 
be done there, that the attendance was kind and pa- 
tient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had 
nothing to ask for. The wretched rooms were as clean 
and sweet as it is possible for such rooms to be; they 


36 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


would become a pest-house in a single week, if they 
were ill-kept. 

I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbar- 
ous staircase, into a better kind of loft devoted to the 
idiotic and imbecile. There was at least Light in it, 
whereas the windows in the former wards had been 
like sides of schoolboys’ bird-cages. There was a strong 
grating over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state 
on either side of the hearth, separated by the breadth 
of this grating, were two old ladies in a condition of 
feeble dignity, which w r as surely the very last and low- 
est reduction of self-complacency, to be found in this 
wonderful humanity of ours. They were evidently jeal- 
ous of each other, and passed their whole time (as some 
people do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally dis- 
paraging each other, and contemptuously watching their 
neighbors. One of these parodies on provincial gentle- 
women was extremely talkative, and expressed a strong 
desire to attend the service on Sundays, from which she 
represented herself to have derived the greatest interest 
and consolation when allowed that privilege. She gos- 
siped so well, and looked altogether so cheery and harm- 
less, that I began to think this a case for the Eastern 
magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion of 
her attending chapel, she had secreted a small stick, 
and had caused some confusion in the responses by sud- 
denly producing it and belaboring the congregation. 

So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of 
the grating — otherwise they would fly at one another’s 
caps — sat all day long, suspecting one another and con- 
templating a world of fits. For, everybody else in the 
room had fits, except the wardswoman, — an elderly, 
able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air 


MRS. GAMP IN ATTENDANCE. 


37 


of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with 
her hands folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, 
biding her time for catching or holding somebody. This 
civil personage (in wfflom I regretted to identify a re- 
duced member of my honorable friend Mrs. Gamp’s 
family) said, “ They has ’em continiwal, sir. They 
drops without no more notice than if they was coach- 
horses dropped from the moon, sir. And when one drops, 
another drops, and sometimes there’ll be as many as 
four or five on ’em at once, dear me, a rollin’ and a 
tearin’, bless you ! — this young woman, now, has ’em 
dreadful bad.” 

She turned up this young woman’s face with her 
hand as she said it. This young woman was seated 
on the floor, pondering, in the foreground of the afflict- 
ed. There was nothing repellent, either in her face or 
head. Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy 
and hysteria were about her, but she was said to be 
the worst there. When I had spoken to her a little, she 
still sat with her face turned up, pondering, and a gleam 
of the mid-day sun shone in upon her. 

— Whether this young woman, and the rest of these 
so sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their 
confused dull way, ever get mental glimpses among 
the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy 
things ? Whether this young woman, brooding like this 
in the summer season, ever thinks that somewhere there 
are trees and flowers, even mountains and the great 
sea? Whether, not to go so far, this young woman 
ever has any dim revelation of that young woman — 
that young woman who is not here and never will come 
here ; who is courted, and caressed, and loved, and has a 
husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and 


88 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


who never knows what it is to have this lashing and 
tearing coming upon her? And whether this young 
woman, God help her, gives herself up then and drops, 
like a coach-horse from the moon ? 

I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children 
penetrating into so hopeless a place, made a sound that 
was pleasant or painful to me. It was something to be 
reminded that the weary world was not all aweary, and 
was ever renewing itself ; but this young woman was a 
child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be 
such as she. Howbeit, the active step and eye of the 
vigilant matron conducted me past the two provincial 
gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the children) 
and into the adjacent nursery. 

There were many babies here, and more than one 
handsome young mother. There were ugly young moth- 
ers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous young 
mothers. But the babies had not appropriated to them- 
selves any bad expression yet, and might have been, for 
anything that appeared to the contrary in their soft fa- 
ces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal. I had the 
pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the bakers 
man to make a cake with all dispatch, and toss it into the 
oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and 
felt much the better for it. Without that refreshment, 
I doubt if I should have been in a condition for “the 
Refractories/’ towards whom my quick little matron — 
for whose adaptation to her office I had by this time 
conceived a genuine respect — drew me next, and mar- 
shalled me the way that I was going. 

The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room 
giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with 
their backs to a window ; before them, a table, and their 


REFRACTORIES, AND MISS OAKUM HEAD. 39 


work. The oldest Refractory was, say twenty ; youngest 
Refractory, say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained, 
in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a Refrac- 
tory habit should affect the tonsils and uvula ; but I 
have always observed that Refractories of both sexes 
and every grade, between a Ragged School and the Old 
Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula 
gain a diseased ascendency. 

“ Five pound indeed ! I hain’t a going fur to pick five 
pound,” said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time 
to herself with her head and chin. “ More than enough 
to pick what we picks now, in sitch a place as this, and 
on wot we gets here ! ” 

(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation 
that the amount of work was likely to be increased. It 
certainly was not heavy then, for one Refractory had 
already done her day’s task — it was barely two o’clock 
— and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly match- 
ing it.) 

“A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain’t it?” said Re- 
fractory Two, “ where a pleeseman ’s called in, if a gal 
says a word ! ” 

“ And wen you ’re sent to prison for nothink or less ! ” 
said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the 
matron hair. “ But any place is better than this ; that ’s 
one thing, and be thankful ! ” 

A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with 
folded arms, — who originated nothing, but who was in 
command of the Skirmishers outside the conversation. 

“ If any place is better than this,” said my brisk guide, 
in the calmest manner, “it is a pity you left a good 
place when you had one.” 

“ Ho, no, I did n’t, matron,” returned the Chief, with 


40 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look 
at the enemy’s forehead. “ Don’t say that, matron, cos 
it ’s lies ! ” 

Oakum Head brought up the Skirmishers again, skir- 
mished, and retired. • 

“ And 1 warn’t a going,” exclaimed Refractory Two, 
66 though I was in one place for as long as four year — 
1 warn’t a going fur to stop in a place that warn’t fit 
for me — there ! And where the fam’ly warn’t ’spectable 
characters — there ! And where I fort’nately or hunfort’- 
nately, found that the people warn’t what they pretended 
to make theirselves out to be — there ! And where it 
was n’t their faults, by chalks, if I warn’t made bad 
and ruinated — Hah ! ” 

During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a 
diversion with the Skirmishers, and had again with- 
drawn. 

The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark 
that he supposed Chief Refractory and Number One, to 
be the two young women who had been taken before 
the magistrate ? 

Yes ! said the Chief, “ we har ! and the wonder is, 
that a pleeseman an t ’ad in now, and we took off agen. 
You can t open your lips here, without a pleeseman.” 

Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the Skir- 
mishers followed suit. 

“ 1 ’ m sure I ’d be thankful,” protested the Chief, look- 
ing sideways at the Uncommercial, “ if I could be got 
into a place, or got abroad. I ’m sick and tired of this 
precious Ouse, I am, with reason.” 

So would be, and so was, Number Two. So would 
be, and so was, Oakum Head. So would be, and so 
were, Skirmishers. 


MISS OAKUM HEAD, AND SKIRMISHERS. 41 


The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that 
he hardly thought it probable that any lady or gentle- 
man in want of a likely young domestic of retiring man- 
ners, would be tempted into the engagement of either 
of the two leading Refractories, on her own presenta- 
tion of herself as per sample. 

“ It ain’t no good being nothink else here,” said the 
Chief. 

The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying. 

“ Oh no it ain’t,” said the Chief. 

“ Not a bit of good,” said Number Two. 

“ And I ’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a 
place, or got abroad,” said the Chief. 

“ And so should I,” said Number Two. “Truly thank- 
ful, I should.” 

Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely 
new idea, the mention of which profound novelty might 
be naturally expected to startle her unprepared hearers 
that she would be very thankful to be got into a place, 
or got abroad. And, as if she had then said, “ Chorus, 
ladies ! ” all the Skirmishers struck up to the same pur- 
pose. We left them, thereupon, and began a long walk 
among the women who were simply old and infirm ; but 
whenever, in the course of this same walk, I looked out 
of any high window that commanded the yard, I saw 
Oakum Head and all the other Refractories looking out 
at their low window for me, and never failing to catch 
me, the moment I showed my head. 

In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables 
of a golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old 
age. In ten minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed 
to have been blown out, and nothing in that way to be 


42 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring 
snufik 

And what was very curious, was, that these dim old 
women had one company notion which was the fashion 
of the place. Every old woman who became aware of 
a visitor and was not in bed, hobbled over a form into 
her accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old 
women confronting another line of dim old women across 
a narrow table. There was no obligation whatever up- 
on them to range themselves in this way ; it was their 
manner of “ receiving.” As a rule, they made no at- 
tempt to talk to one another, or to look at the visitor, 
or to look at anything, but sat silently working their 
mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows. In some of these 
wards, it was good to see a few green plants ; in others, 
an isolated Refractory acting as nurse, who did well 
enough in that capacity, when separated from her com- 
peers ; every one of these wards, day-room, night-room, 
or both combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh. I 
have seen as many such places as most travellers in my 
line, and I never saw one such, better kept. 

Among the bedridden there was great patience, great 
reliance on the books under the pillow, great faith in 
God. All cared for sympathy, but none much cared 
to be encouraged with hope of recovery ; on the whole, 
I should say, it was considered rather a distinction 
to have a complication of disorders, and to be in a 
worse way than the rest. From some of the windows, 
the river could be seen, with all its life and move- 
ment; the day was bright, but I came upon no one 
who was looking out. 

In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs 


TWO OLD WOMEN. 


43 


of distinction, like the President and Vice of the good 
company, were two old women, upwards of ninety 
years of age. The younger of the two, just turned 
ninety, was deaf, but not very, and could easily be 
made to hear. In her early time she had nursed a 
child, who was now another old woman, more infirm 
than herself, inhabiting the very same chamber. She 
perfectly understood this when the matron told it, and, 
with sundry nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed 
out the woman in question. The elder of this pair, 
ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper 
(but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really 
not deaf, wonderfully preserved, and amazingly con- 
versational. She had not long lost her husband, and 
had been in that place little more than a year. At 
Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor crea- 
ture would have been individually addressed, would 
have been tended in her own room, and would have 
had her life gently assimilated to a comfortable life 
out of doors. Would that be much to do in England 
for a woman who has kept herself out of a work- 
house more than ninety rough long years ? When 
Britain first, at Heaven’s command, arose, with a great 
deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, 
did her guardian angels positively forbid it in the 
Charter which has been so much be-sung? 

The object of my journey was accomplished when 
the nimble matron had no more to show me. As I 
shook hands with her at the gate, I told her that I 
thought Justice had not used her very well, and that 
the wise men of the East were not infallible. 

How, I reasoned with myself, as I made my jour- 
ney home again, concerning those Foul wards. They 


44 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ought not to exist ; no person of common decency and 
humanity can see them and doubt it. But what is 
this Union to do ? The necessary alteration would 
cost several thousands of pounds; it has already to 
support three workhouses ; its inhabitants work hard 
for their bare lives, and are already rated for the 
relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable 
endurance. One poor parish in this very Union is 
rated to the amount of five and sixpence in the 
pound, at the very same time when the rich parish 
of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, is rated at about 
Sevenpence in the pound ; Paddington at about Four- 
pence ; Saint James’s, Westminster, at about Ten- 
pence ! It is only through the equalization of Poor 
Kates that what is left undone in this wise, can be 
done. Much more is left undone, or is ill done, than 
I have space to suggest in these notes of a single 
uncommercial journey ; but the wise men of the East, 
before they can reasonably hold forth about it, must 
look to the North and South and West; let them also, 
any morning before taking the seat of Solomon, look 
into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, 
and first ask themselves “ how much more can these 
poor people — many of whom keep themselves with 
difficulty enough out of the workhouse — bear ? ” 

I had yet other matter for reflection, as I journeyed 
home, inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from 
the neighborhood of Mr. Baker’s trap, I had knocked 
at the gate of the workhouse of St. George’s-in-the- 
East, and had found it to be an establishment highly 
creditable to those parts, and thoroughly well admin- 
istered by a most intelligent master. I remarked in 
it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate 


A FALSE MASON. 


45 


vanity and folly can do. “ This was the Hall where 
those old paupers, male and female, whom I had just 
seen, met for the Church service, was it ? ” — “ Yes.” 
— “ Did they sing the Psalms to any instrument ? ” — 
“ They would like to, very much ; they would have an 
extraordinary interest in doing so.” — “And could none 
be got?” — “ Well, a piano could even have been got 

for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions ” 

Ah ? better, far better, my Christian friend in the beau- 
tiful garment, to have let the singing boys alone, and 
left the multitude to sing for themselves! You should 
know better than I, but I think I have read that they 
did so, once upon a time, and that “ when they had 
sung an hymn,” Some One (not in a beautiful garment) 
went up unto the Mount of Olives. 

It made my heart ache to think of this miserable 
trifling, in the streets of a city where every stone 
I seemed to call to me, as I walked along, “ Turn this 
way, man, and see what waits to be done ! ” So I 
decoyed myself into another train of thought to ease 
my heart. But I don’t know that I did it, for I was 
so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only a change 
to a single pauper who took possession of my remem- 
brance, instead of a thousand. 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” he had said, in a confi- 
dential manner, on another occasion, taking me aside ; 
“but I have seen better days.” 

“I am very sorry to hear it.” 

“ Sir, I have a complaint to make against the mas- 
ter.” 

“ I have no power here, I assure you. And if I 
had ” 


46 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between your- 
self and a man who has seen better days, sir. The mas- 
ter and myself are both masons, sir, and I make him the 
sign continually ; but, because I am in this unfortunate 
position, sir, he won’t give me the countersign ! ” 


A THEATRICAL NEIGHBORHOOD. 


47 


IV. 


TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 

As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and 
came out into the streets at six on a drizzling Satur- 
day evening in the last past month of January, all that 
neighborhood of Covent Garden looked very desolate. 
It is so essentially a neighborhood which has seen bet- 
ter days, that bad weather affects it sooner than another 
place which has not come down in the world. In its 
present reduced condition, it bears a thaw almost worse 
than any place I know. It gets so dreadfully low-spir- 
ited, when damp breaks forth. Those wonderful houses 
about Drury-Lane Theatre, which in the palmy days of 
theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of busi- 
ness, and which now change hands every week, but never 
change their character of being divided and subdivided 
on the ground floor into mouldy dens of shops where an 
orange and half a dozen nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one 
cake of fancy soap, and a cigar-box, are offered for sale 
and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that 
evening by the statue of Shakspeare, with the rain-drops 
coursing one another down its innocent nose. Those 
inscrutable pigeon-hole .offices, with nothing in them (not 
so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before 
the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets 
at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentle- 


48 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


men in smeary hats, too tall for them, whom one occar 
sionnlly seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly 
unconnected with strips of cloth of various colors and 
a rolling ball, — those Bedouin establishments, deserted 
by the tribe, and tenantless except when sheltering in 
one corner an irregular row of ginger-beer bottles which 
would have made one shudder on such a night, but 
for its being plain that they had nothing in them, 
shrunk from the shrill cries of the newsboys at their 
Exchange in the kennel of Catherine Street, like guilty 
things upon a fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in 
Great Bussell Street, the Death’s-head pipes were like 
theatrical memento mori , admonishing beholders of the 
decline of the playhouse as an Institution. I walked 
up Bow Street, disposed to be angry with the shops 
there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by ex- 
hibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which dia- 
dems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that some 
shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and 
had struggled out of it, were not getting on prosper- 
ously, — like some actors I have known, who took to 
business and failed to make it answer. In a word, those 
streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical 
streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the Found Dead 
on the blackboard at the police-station might have an- 
nounced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of wa- 
ter outside the fire-engine maker’s at the corner of Long 
Acre might have been occasioned by his having brought 
out the whole of his stock to play upon its last smoul- 
dering ashes. 

And yet, on such a night, in so degenerate a time, 
the object of my journey was theatrical. And yet with- 
in half an hour I was in an immense theatre, capable of 
holding nearly five thousand people. 


SENSIBLE BUILDING. 


49 


What Theatre ? Her Majesty’s ? Far better. Boyal 
Italian Opera? Far better. Infinitely superior to the 
latter for hearing in ; infinitely superior to both for see- 
ing in. To every part of this Theatre, spacious fire- 
proof ways of ingress and egress. For every part of 
it, convenient places of refreshment and retiring-rooms. 
Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised as to 
quality, and sold at an appointed price ; respectable fe- 
male attendants, ready for the commonest women in the 
audience ; a general air of consideration, decorum, and 
supervision, most commendable ; an unquestionably hu- 
manizing influence in all the social arrangements of the 
place. 

Surely a dear Theatre, then ? Because there were in 
London (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance- 
prices up to half a guinea a head, whose arrangements 
were not half so civilized. Surely, therefore, a dear 
I Theatre? Not very dear. A gallery at three-pence, 
another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes 
and pit-stalls at a shilling, and a few private boxes at 
a half a crown. 

My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into 
| every nook of this great place, and among every class 
of the audience assembled in it, — amounting that even- 
i ing, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hun- 
! dreds. Magnificently lighted by a firmament of spark- 
ling chandeliers, the building was ventilated to per- 
! fection. My sense of smell, without being particularly 
,i delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner 
| places of public resort, that I have often been obliged 
. to leave them when I have made an uncommercial 
f journey expressly to look on. The air of this Theatre 
! was fresh, cool, and wholesome. To help towards this 


50 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeni- 
ously combining the experience of hospitals and railway- 
stations. Asphalte pavements substituted for wooden 
floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick and tile — even 
at the back of the boxes — for plaster and paper, no 
benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used : a cool 
material, with a light glazed surface, being the covering 
of the seats. 

These various contrivances are as well considered in 
the place in question as if it were a Fever Hospital; 
the result is, that it is sweet and healthful. It has 
been constructed from the ground to the roof, with a 
careful reference to sight and sound in every corner ; the 
result is, that its form is beautiful, and that the appear- 
ance of the audience, as seen from the proscenium, — 
with every face in it commanding the stage, and the 
whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, 
that a hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage 
without the movement being seen from thence, — is 
highly remarkable in its union of vastness with com- 
pactness. The stage itself, and all its appurtenances 
of machinery, cellarage, height, and breadth, are on a 
scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo 
at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any 
notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Bri- 
tannia Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s 
Hospital in the Old-street Hoad, London. The Forty 
Thieves might be played here, and every thief ride his 
real horse, and the disguised captain bring in his oil- 
jars on a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of 
the way. This really extraordinary place is the achieve- 
ment of one man’s enterprise, and was erected on the 
ruins of an inconvenient old building, in less than five 


A SATURDAY AUDIENCE. 


51 


months, at a round cost of five-and-twenty thousand 
pounds. To dismiss this part of my subject, and still 
to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his 
due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility 
upon him to make the best of his audience, and to do 
his best for them, is a highly agreeable sign of these 
times. 

As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I 
will presently show, were the object of my journey, I 
entered on the play of the night as one of the two 
thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at 
my neighbors. We were a motley assemblage of 
people, and we had a good many boys and young men 
among us ; we had also many girls and young women. 
To represent, however, that we did not include a very 
great number, and a very fair proportion of family 
groups, would be to make a gross misstatement. Such 
groups were to be seen in all parts of the house ; in 
the boxes and stalls, particularly, they were composed 
of persons of very decent appearance, who had "many 
children with them. Among our dresses there were most 
kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and 
corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The 
caps of our young men were mostly of a limp char- 
acter, and we who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, 
into our places with our hands in our pockets, and 
occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like 
eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like- 
links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our 
hair over each cheek-bone with a slight Thief-flavor 
in it. Besides prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics, 
dock-laborers, costermongers, petty tradesmen, small 
clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, 


52 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


poor workers in a hundred highways and by-ways. 
Many of us — on the whole, the majority — were not 
at all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or con- 
versation. But we had all come together in a place 
where our convenience was well consulted, and where 
we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening’s en- 
tertainment in common. We were not going to lose 
any part of what we had paid for, through anybody’s 
caprice, and as a community we had a character to 
lose. So w r e were closely attentive, and kept excellent 
order ; and let the man or boy who did otherwise in- 
stantly get out from this place, or we would put him 
out with the greatest expedition. 

We began at half-past six with a pantomime, — with 
a pantomime so long, that before it was over I felt as 
if I had been travelling for six weeks, — going to In- 
dia, say, by the Overland Mail. The Spirit of Lib- 
erty was the principal personage in the Introduction, 
and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the 
globe, glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit, who 
sang charmingly. We were delighted to understand 
that there was no Liberty anywhere but among our- 
selves, and we highly applauded the agreeable fact. 
In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other 
way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom 
of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a 
potentate who called in to his aid their old arch-ene- 
my Rust, and who would have got the better of them 
if the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time 
transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harle- 
quin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of 
Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and 
three spineless sons. We all knew w r hat was coming 


PANTOMIME AND MELODRAMA. 


53 


when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with 
the big face, and His Majesty backed to the side- 
scenes and began untying himself behind, with his big 
face all one side. Our excitement at that crisis was 
great, and our delight unbounded. After this era in 
our existence, we went through all the incidents of a 
pantomime ; it was not by any means a savage panto- 
mime in the w r ay of burning or boiling people, or throw- 
ing them out of window, or cutting them up ; was 
often very droll ; was always liberally got up, and clev- 
erly presented. I noticed that the people who kept 
the shops, and who represented the passengers in the 
thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conventionality in 
them, but were unusually like the real thing, — from 
which I infer that you may take that audience in (if 
you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, 
Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done as to 
anything in the streets. I noticed, also, that wdien 
two young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel- 
and - sausage - cravated portion of the audience, were 
chased by policemen, and, finding themselves in danger 
of being caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the 
policemen to tumble over them, there was great rejoic- 
ing among the caps, — as though^ it were a delicate 
reference to something tfiey had heard of before. 

The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melodrama. 
Throughout the evening, I was pleased to observe Vir- 
tue quite as triumphant as she usually is out of doors, 
and indeed I thought rather more so. We all agreed 
(for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and 
we were as hard as iron upon Vice, and w r e would n’t 
hear of Villany getting on in the world, — no, not on 
any consideration whatever. 


54 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Between the pieces, we almost all of us Tvent out and 
refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer 
at the bar of the neighboring public-house, some of us 
drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and gin- 
ger-beer at the refreshment - bars established for us in 
the Theatre. The sandwich — as substantial as was 
consistent with portability, and as cheap as possible — 
we hailed as one of our greatest institutions. It forced 
its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, 
and we were always delighted to see it ; its adaptabil- 
ity to the varying moods of our nature was surprising ; 
we could never weep so comfortably as when our tears 
fell on our sandwich ; we could never laugh so heart- 
ily as when we choked with sandwich; Virtue never 
looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as when we 
paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would 
come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever 
Innocence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in 
striped stockings. When the curtain fell for the night, 
we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through 
the rain and mire, and home to bed. 

This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Be\^ 
ing Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half 
of my uncommercial journey; for its object was to 
compare the play on Saturday evening with the preach- 
ing in the same Theatre on Sunday evening. 

Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the 
similarly damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned 
to this Theatre. L drove up to the entrance (fearful 
of being late, or I should have come on foot), and found 
myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy 
to state, were put into excellent spirits by my arrival. 
Having nothing to look at but the mud and the closed 


A SUNDAY AUDIENCE. 


55 


doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed the comic 
spectacle. My modesty inducing me to draw off, some 
hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at once 
forgot me, and applied themselves to their former occu- 
pation of looking at the mud and looking in at the 
closed doors : which, being of grated iron-work, allowed 
the lighted passage within to be seen. They were 
chiefly people of respectable appearance, odd and im- 
pulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of be- 
ing there, as most crowds do. 

In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but 
that a very obliging passer-by informed me that the 
Theatre was already full, and that the people whom I 
saw in the street were all shut out for want of room. 
After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the 
building, and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box 
that had been kept for me. 

There must have been full four thousand people pres- 
ent. Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could bring it 
out as holding little less than fourteen hundred. Every 
part of the house was well filled, and I had not found it 
easy to make my way along the back of the boxes to 
where I sat. The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted ; 
there was no light on the stage ; the orchestra was empty. 
The green curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely 
on chairs on the small space of stage before it, were some 
thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In the centre 
of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was 
the presiding minister. The kind of rostrum he occu- 
pied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a 
boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a 
gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and 
leaning forward over the mantelpiece. 


56 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. 
It was followed by a discourse, to which the congrega- 
tion listened with most exemplary attention and uninter- 
rupted silence and decorum. My own attention compre- 
hended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn 
to both in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at 
the time. 

“ A very difficult thing,” I thought, when the discourse 
began, “ to speak appropriately to so large an audience, 
and to speak with tact. Without it, better not to speak 
at all. Infinitely better, to read the New Testament 
well, and to let that speak. In this congregation there 
is indubitably one pulse ; but I doubt if any power short 
of genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as 
one.” 

I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse pro- 
ceeded, that the minister was a good speaker. I could 
not possibly say to myself that he expressed an under- 
standing of the general mind and character of his au- 
dience. There was a supposititious working-man intro- 
duced into the homily, to make supposititious objections to 
our Christian religion and be reasoned down, who was 
not only a very disagreeable person, but remarkably un- 
like life, — very much more unlike it than anything I 
had seen in the pantomime. The native independence of 
character this artisan was supposed to possess, was repre- 
sented by a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never 
heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse 
swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable to 
his feelings I should conceive, considered in the light of 
a portrait, and as far away from the fact as a Chinese 
Tartar. There was a model pauper introduced in like 
manner, who appeared to me to be the most intolerably 


SPIRITUAL PRIDE. 


57 


arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in ab- 
solute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. 
For, how did this pauper testify to his having received 
the gospel of humility ? A gentleman met him in the 
workhouse, and said (which I myself really thought good- 
natured of him), “Ah, John ! I am sorry to see you 
here. I am sorry to see you so poor.” “ Poor, sir ! ” re- 
plied that man, drawing himself up, “ I am the son of a 
Prince ! My father is the King of Kings. My father 
is the Lord of Lords. My father is the ruler of all the 
Princes of the Earth ! ” &c. And this was what all the 
preacher’s fellow-sinners might come to, if they would 
embrace this blessed book — which I must say it did 
some violence to my own feelings of reverence, to see 
held out at arm’s length at frequent intervals and sound- 
ingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale. Now, could I 
help asking myself the question, wdiether the mechanic 
; before me, who must detect the preacher as being wrong 
about the visible manner of himself and the like of him- 
self, and about such a noisy lip-server as that pauper, 
might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the oc- 
casion, doubt that preacher’s being right about things 
not visible to human senses ? 

; Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such 
j an audience continually, as “ fellow-sinners ” ? Is it not 
li enough to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering 
! and striving to-day, dying to-morrow ? By our common 
humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our common capa- 
i cities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and 
| our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach 
. something better than ourselves, by our common ten- 
i dency to believe in something good, and to invest what- 
i ever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities 


58 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


that are superior to our own failings and weaknesses 
as we know them in our own poor hearts — by these. 
Hear me ! — Surely, it is enough to be fellow- creatures. 
Surely, it includes the other designation and some touch- 
ing meanings over and above. 

Again. There was a personage introduced into the 
discourse (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my re- 
membrance of my reading), who had been personally 
known to the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton 
in all the w r ays of philosophy, but had been an infidel. 
Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that 
subject, and many a time had he failed to convince that 
intelligent man. But he fell ill, and died, and before he 
died he recorded his conversion — in words which the 
preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would 
read to you from this piece of paper. I must confess 
that to me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did 
not appear particularly edifying. I thought their tone 
extremely selfish, and I thought they had a spiritual 
vanity in them which was of the before-mentioned re- 
fractory pauper’s family. 

All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, 
but the slang and twang of the conventicle — as bad in 
its way as that of the House of Commons, and nothing 
worse can be said of it — should be studiously avoided 
under such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance 
was not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite 
agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet “ points ” 
to his backers on the stage, as if appealing to those dis- 
ciples to show him up, and testify to the multitude that 
each of those points was a clincher. 

But, in respect of the large Christianity of his gen- 
eral tone ; of his renunciation of all priestly authority ; 


SPECIALITY WANTING. 


59 


of his earnest and reiterated assurance to the people 
that the commonest among them could work out their 
own salvation if they would, by simply, lovingly, and 
dutifully following Our Saviour, and that they needed 
the mediation of no erring man ; in these particulars 
this gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing could be 
better than the spirit, or the plain, emphatic words of 
his discourse in these respects. And it was a most sig- 
nificant and encouraging circumstance that whenever he 
struck that chord, or whenever he described anything 
which Christ himself had done, the array of faces be- 
fore him was very much more earnest, and very much 
more expressive of emotion, than at any other time. 

And now I am brought to the fact, that the lowest 
part of the audience of the previous night was not there . 
There is no doubt about it. There was no such thing 
in that building, that Sunday evening. I have been told 
since, that the lowest part of the audience of the Vic- 
toria Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services. 
I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion 
of which I write, the lowest part of the usual audience 
of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably 
stayed away. When I first took my seat and looked 
at the house, my surprise at the change in its occu- 
pants was as great as my disappointment. To the most 
respectable class of the previous evening, was added a 
great number of respectable strangers attracted by curi- 
osity, and drafts from the regular congregations of va- 
rious chapels. It was impossible to fail in identifying 
the character of these last, and they were very numer- 
ous. I came out in a strong, slow tide of them set- 
ting from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was 
in progress, the respectable character of the auditory 


60 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


was so manifest in their appearance, that when the 
minister addressed a supposititious “ outcast,” one really 
felt a little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not 
justified by anything the eye could discover. 

The time appointed for the conclusion of the pro- 
ceedings was eight o’clock. The address having lasted 
until full that time, and it being the custom to con- 
clude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in a few 
sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and 
that those who desired to go before the hymn was 
sung could go now, without giving offence. No one 
stirred. The hymn was then sung, in good time and 
tune and unison, and its effect was very striking. A 
comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, 
and in seven or eight minutes there was nothing left 
in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust. 

That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good 
things, I do not doubt. Nor do I doubt that they 
will work lower and lower down in the social scale, 
if those who preside over them will he very careful 
on two heads : firstly, not to disparage the places in 
which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers ; 
secondly, not to set themselves in antagonism to the 
natural inborn desire of the mass of mankind to recre- 
ate themselves and to be amused. 

There is a third head, taking precedence of all 
others, to which my remarks on the discourse I heard 
have tended. In the New Testament there is the 
most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by 
man, and there are the terse models for all prayer and 
for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, 
Sunday preachers — else why are they there, con- 
sider? As to the history, tell it. Some people can- 


BETTER WORDS THAN MEN’S. 


61 


not read, some people will not read, many people (this 
especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it 
hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is pre- 
sented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply 
gaps, and want of continuity. Help them over that first 
stumbling-block, by setting forth the history in narrative, 
with no fear of exhausting it. You will never preach 
so well, yon will never move them so profoundly, you 
will never send them away with half so much to think 
of. Which is the better interest: Christ’s choice of 
twelve poor men to help in those merciful wonders 
among the poor and rejected ; or the pious bullying of 
a whole Union-full of paupers ? What is your changed 
philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out 
of the mud of the streets and of my life, when you have 
the widow’s son to tell me about, the ruler’s daughter, 
the other figure at the door when the brother of the 
two sisters was dead, and one of the two ran to the 
mourner, crying, “The Master is come and calleth for 
thee ” ? — Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget 
himself and remember no individuality but one, and no 
eloquence but one, stand up before four thousand men 
and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday night, 
recounting that narrative to them as fellow-creatures, 
and he shall see a sight! 


62 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


y. 


POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 

Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and 
keeps watch on the life of poor Jack, commissioned to 
take charge of Mercantile Jack as well as Jack of the 
national navy? If not, who is? What is the cherub 
about, and what are we all about, when poor Mer- 
cantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out 
by pennyweights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the 
barque Bowie-knife — when he looks his last at that 
infernal craft, with the first officer’s iron boot-heel in 
his remaining eye, or with his dying body towed 
overboard in the ship’s wake, while the cruel wounds 
in it do “ the multitudinous seas incarnadine ” ? 

Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard 
the brig Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the 
first officer did half the damage to cotton that he does 
to men, there would presently arise from both sides 
of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the 
sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping 
watch on the markets that pay, that such vigilant 
cherub would, with a winged sword, have that gallant 
officer’s organ of destructiveness out of his head in the 
space of a flash of lightning? 

If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unrea- 
sonable of men, for I believe it with all my soul. 

This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays 


JACK’S DISTRACTIONS. 


63 


at Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. 
Alas for me ! I have long outgrown the state of sweet 
little cherub ; but there I was, and there Mercantile 
Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was : 
the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and 
the north-east winds snipping off the tops of the little 
waves in the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to 
pelt him with. Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the 
hard weather : as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack. 
He was girded to ships’ masts and funnels of steamers, 
like a forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; 
he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to 
beat him off ; he was dimly discernible up in a world 
of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing ; he was faintly 
audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo ; 
he was winding round and round at capstans melodious, 
monotonous, and drunk ; he was of a diabolical aspect, 
with coaling for the Antipodes ; he was washing decks 
barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the 
blast, though it was sharper than the knife in his leath- 
ern girdle ; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and 
; hair ; he was standing by at the shoot of the Cunard 
steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of several 
butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into 
' the ice-house ; he was coming aboard of other vessels, 
with his kit in a tarpaulin-bag, attended by plunderers to 
i the very last moment of his shore-going existence. As 
j though his senses when released from the uproar of the 
elements, were under obligation to be confused by other 
ti turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of 
hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and 
i casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturbance, on 
the quays, that was the very madness of sound. And as, 


64 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


in tlie midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair 
blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking 
leave of his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was 
shrill in the wind, and every little steamer coming and 
going across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and 
every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down, 
as if there were a general taunting chorus of “ Come 
along, Mercantile Jack ! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, ho- 
cussed, entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out. Come along, 
Poor Mercantile Jack, and be tempest-tossed till you are 
drowned ! ” 

The uncommercial transaction which had brought me 
and Jack together, was this ; — I had entered the Liver- 
pool police-force, that I might have a look at the various 
unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack. 
As my term of service in that distinguished corps was 
short, and as my personal bias in the capacity of one of 
its members has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my 
evidence that it is an admirable force. Besides that it is 
composed, without favor, of the best men that can be 
picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence. Its 
organization against Fires, I take to be much better than 
the metropolitan system, and in all respects it tempers 
its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable 
discretion. 

Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, 
and I had taken, for purposes of identification, a photo- 
graph-likeness of a thief, in the portrait-room at our head 
police-office (on the whole, he seemed rather compli- 
mented by the proceeding), and I had been on police- 
parade, and the small hand of the clock was moving on 
to ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr. Super- 
intendent to the traps that were set for Jack. In Mr* 


SHARPEYE AND CO. 


65 


Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well- 
looking, well set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a 
cavalry ai£, a good chest, and a resolute but not by any 
means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a plain 
black walking-stick of hard wood ; and whenever and 
wherever, at any after-time of the night, he struck it on 
the pavement with a ringing sound, it instantly produced 
a whistle out of the darkness, and a policeman. To this 
remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery and magic 
which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the 
traps that were set for Jack. 

We began by diving into the obscurest streets and 
lanes of the port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheer- 
ful discourse, before a dead wall, apparently some ten 
miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground, 
and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute of 
hand to temple, two policemen, — not in the least sur- 
prised themselves, not in the least surprising Mr. Su- 
perintendent. 

“ All right, Sharpeye ? ” 

“All right, sir.” 

“ All right, Trampfoot ? ” 

“All right, sir.” 

“ Is Quickear there ? ” 

“ Here am I, sir.” 

“ Come with us.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent 
and I went next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched 
as rear-guard. Sharpeye, I soon had occasion to re- 
mark, had a skilful and quite professional way of open- 
ing doors — touched latches delicately, as if they were 
keys of musical instruments — opened every door he 
5 


66 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


touched, as if he were perfectly confident that there 
was stolen property behind it — instantly insinuated 
himself, to prevent its being shut. 

Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were 
set for Jack, but Jack did not happen to be in any of 
them. They were all such miserable places that really, 
Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth. 
In every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, wait- 
ing for Jack. Now, it was a crouching old woman, 
like the picture of the Norwood Gypsy in the old six- 
penny dream-books ; now, it was a crimp of the male 
sex in a checked shirt and without a coat, reading a 
newspaper ; now, it was a man crimp and a woman 
crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in 
holy matrimony ; now, it was Jack’s delight, his (un) 
lovely Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack, and 
were all frightfully disappointed to see us. 

“ Who have you got up-stairs here ? ” says Sharpeye, 
generally. (In the Move-on-tone.) 

“ Nobody, gurr ; sure not a blessed sowl ! ” (Irish 
feminine reply.) 

“ What do you mean by nobody ? Did n’t I hear a 
woman’s step go up-stairs when my hand was on the 
latch ? ” 

“ Ah ! sure thin you ’re right, surr, I forgot her ! 
’T is on’y Betsy White, surr. Ah ! you know Betsy, 
surr. Come down, Betsy darlin’, and say the gintle- 
min.” 

Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep 
staircase is in the room) with a forcible expression in 
her protesting face, of an intention to compensate her- 
self for the present trial by grinding Jack finer than 
usual when he does come. Generally, Sharpeye turns 


JACK’S HOUSES OF CALL. 


67 


to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of 
his remarks were wax-work: 

“One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman 
has been indicted three times. This man’s a regular 
bad one likewise. His real name is Pegg. Gives him- 
self out as Waterhouse.” 

“Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, 
thin, since I was in this house, bee the good Lard ! ” 
says the woman. 

Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes 
exceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his 
paper with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs 
our observation with a look, to the prints and pictures 
that are invariably numerous on the walls. Always, 
Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the door- 
step. In default of Sharpeye being acquainted with 
the exact individuality of any gentleman encountered, 
one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer 
: air, like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, 
but knows himself to be Fogle ; or that Canlon is 
Walker’s brother, against whom there was not sufficient 
evidence ; or that the man who says he never was at 
| sea since he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage 
! last Thursday, or sails to-morrow morning. “ And that 
is a bad class of man, you see,” says Mr. Superinten- 
dent, when he got out into the dark again, “ and very 
difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this 
place too hot to hold him, enters himself for a voyage 
as steward or cook, and is out of knowledge for months, 
and then turns up again worse than ever.” 

When we had gone into many such houses, and had 
i come out (always leaving everybody relapsing into wait- 
ing for Jack), we started off to a singing-house where 
, Jack was expected to muster strong. 


68 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


The vocalization was taking place in a long, low room 
up-stairs ; at one end, an orchestra of two performers, 
and a small platform ; across the room, a series of open 
pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle ; at the 
other end, a larger pew than the rest, entitled Snug, 
and reserved for mates and similar good company. 
About the room, some amazing coffee-colored pictures 
varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed creatures in 
cases ; dotted among the audience, in Snug and out of 
Snug, the “ Professionals among them, the celebrated 
comic favorite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very hideous 
with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat ; beside 
him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her 
natural colors — a little heightened. 

It was a Friday night, and Friday night was consid- 
ered not a good night for Jack. At any rate, Jack 
did not show in very great force even here, though 
the house was one to which he much resorts, and where 
a good deal of money is taken. There was British 
Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty 
glass, as if he were trying to read his fortune at the 
bottom ; there was Loafing Jack of the Stars and 
Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with his long 
nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft 
about him but his cabbage-leaf hat ; there was Spanish 
Jack with curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and 
a knife not far from his hand, if you got into trouble 
with him ; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Swe- 
den, and Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke 
of their pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they 
were carved out of dark wood, towards the young lady 
dancing the hornpipe : who found the platform so ex- 
ceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous expecta- 


MR. LICENSED VICTUALLER’S TALENT. 


69 


tion of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear 
through the window. Still, if all hands had been got 
together, they would not have more than half filled the 
room. Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, 
the host, that it was Friday night, and, besides, it was 
getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard. A 
sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the 
host, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker’s 
arithmetic in each eye. Attended to his business him- 
self, he said. Always on the spot. When he heard 
of talent, trusted *nobody’s account of it, but went off 
by rail to see it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds 
a week for talent — four pound — five pound. Banjo 
Bones was undoubted talent. Hear this instrument 
that was going to play — it was real talent ! In truth 
it was very good ; a kind of piano-accordion, played by 
a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure, and 
dress, that made the audience look coarser. She sang 
to the instrument, too ; first, a song about village-bells, 
and how they chimed ; then a song about how I went, 
to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, 
which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the 
best. A good girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler. Kept 
herself select. Sat in Snug, not listening to the blan- 
dishments of Mates. Lived with mother. Father dead. 
Once a merchant well to do, but over-speculated him- 
self. On delicate inquiry as to salary paid for item 
of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler’s pounds 
dropped suddenly to shillings — still it was a very com- 
fortable thing for a young person like that, you know ; 
she only went on six times a night, and was only re- 
quired to be there from six at night to twelve. What 
was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler’s assurance that 


70 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


lie “ never allowed any language, and never suffered any 
disturbance.” Sharpeye confirmed the statement, and 
the order that prevailed was the best proof of it that 
could have been cited. So, I came to the conclusion 
that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he 
does) much worse than trust himself to Mr. Victualler, 
and pass his evenings here. 

But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent — 
said Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with 
military salute — for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. 
Bing the wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, 
and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to con- 
vey us to the Darkies. 

There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark 
Jack ; he was producible. The Genii set us down in 
the little first floor of a little public-house, and there, 
in a stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack and 
Dark Jack’s Delight, his white unlovely Nan, sitting 
against the wall all round the room. More than that : 
Dark Jack’s Delight was the least unlovely Nan, both 
morally and physically, that I saw that night. 

As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among 
the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up ? 
“ Ah la’ads ! ” said a negro, sitting by the door, “ gib the 
jebblem a darnse. Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ’um 
QUAD-rill.” 

This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress 
half Greek and half English. As master of the cere- 
monies, he called all the figures, and occasionally ad- 
dressed himself parenthetically — after this manner. 
When he was very loud, I use capitals. 

“ Now den ! Hoy ! One. Right and left. (Put a 
steam on, gib ’um powder.) Lv-dies’ chail. BAL-loon 


BLACK QUADRILLES. 


71 


say. Lemonade ! Two. AD-warnse and go back (gib 
’ell a breakdown, shake it out o’ yerselbs, keep a movil). 
SwiNG-corners, Bal-1ooii say, and Lemonade ! (Hoy !) 
Three. Gent come for’ard with a lady and go back, 
hoppersite come for’ard and do what yer can. (Aeio- 
hoy !) BAL-loon say, and leetle lemonade (Dat hair 
nigger by ’um fireplace ’hind a’ time, shake it out o’ 
yerselbs, gib ’ell a breakdown). Now den ! Hoy ! F our ! 
Lemonade. BAL-loon say, and swing. Four ladies 
meets in ’um middle, four gents goes round ’um ladies, 
four gents passes out under ’um ladies’ arms, swing 
— and Lemonade till ’a moosic can’t play no more ! 
(Hoy, Hoy!)” 

The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an 
unusually powerful man of six feet three or four. The 
sound of their flat feet on the floor was as unlike the 
sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white 
faces. They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, 
double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the 
time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, 
and with a childish good-humored enjoyment that was 
very prepossessing. They generally kept together, these 
poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they 
were at a disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in 
the neighboring streets. But, if I were Light Jack, I 
should be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark 
Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have 
found him a simple and a gentle fellow. Bearing this in 
mind, I asked his friendly permission to leave him res- 
toration of beer, in wishing him good-night, and thus it 
fell out that the last words I heard him say as I blun- 
dered down the worn stairs, were, “Jebblem’s elthl 
Ladies drinks fust ! ” 


72 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


The night was now well on into the morning, but 
for miles and hours we explored a strange world, where 
nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sit- 
ting up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among 
a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called En- 
tries, kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much 
better order than by the corporation : the want of gas- 
light in the most dangerous and infamous of these places 
being quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need de- 
scribe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was 
waited for, as specimens of the rest. Many we attained 
by noisome passages so profoundly dark that we felt our 
way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we 
visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental 
crockery; the quantity of the latter set forth on little 
shelves and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, 
indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an extraor- 
dinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of 
that bait in his traps. 

Among such garniture, in one front parlor in the dead 
of the night, four women were sitting by a fire. One 
of them had a male child in her arms. On a stool among 
them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had evi- 
dently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard. 

“Well! how do you do?” says Mr. Superintendent, 
looking about him. 

“ Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going 
to treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.” 

“ Order there ! 99 says Sharpeye. 

“ None of that ! 99 says Quickear. 

Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, 
“ Meggisson’s lot this is. And a bad ’un ! ” 

“Well!” says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand 


MEGGISSON’S LOT. 


73 


on the shoulder of the swarthy youth, “and who’s 
this ? ” 

“Antonio, sir.” 

“ And what does he do here ? ” 

“ Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, 
I suppose ? ” 

“ A young foreign sailor ? ” 

“ Yes. He ’s a Spaniard. You ’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, 
Antonio ? ” 

“ Me Spanish.” 

“ And he don’t know a word you say, not he, not if 
you was to talk to him till doomsday.” (Triumphantly, 
as if it redounded to the credit of the house.) 

“ Will he play something ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. 
You ain’t ashamed to play something ; are you ? ” 

The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, 
and three of the women keep time to it with their heads, 
and the fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought 
any money in with him, I am afraid he will never take 
it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar 
may be in a bad way. But the look of the young man 
and the tinkling of the instrument so change the place 
in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder 
where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off. 

I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my 
uncommercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty 
in this establishment, by having taken the child in my 
arms. For, on my offering to restore it to a ferocious 
joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its 
mother, that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, 
and declined to accept it ; backing into the fireplace, and 
very shrilly declaring, regardless of remonstrance from 


74 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


her friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever 
took a child from its mother of his own will, was bound 
to stick to it. The uncommercial sense of being in a 
rather ridiculous position with the poor little child be- 
ginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy 
friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot ; who, laying 
hands on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on 
to the nearest woman, and bade her “ take hold of that.” 
As we came out, the Bottle was passed to the ferocious 
joker, and they all sat down as before, including Antonio 
and the guitar. It was clear that there was no such 
thing as a nightcap to this baby’s head, and that even he 
never went to bed, but was always kept up — and would 
grow up, kept up — waiting for Jack. 

Later still in the night, we came (by the court “ where 
the man was murdered,” and by the other court across 
the street, into which his body was dragged) to another 
parlor in another Entry, where several people w r ere 
sitting round a fire in just the same way. It was a dirty 
and offensive place, w r ith some ragged clothes drying 
in it ; but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door 
• (to be out of the reach of marauding hands, possibly) 
with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece of 
Cheshire cheese. 

“Well!” says Mr. Superintendent, with a compre- 
hensive look all round. “ How do you do ? ” 

“ Not much to boast of, sir.” From the curtseying 
woman of the house. “ This is my good man, sir.” 

“You are not registered as a common Lodging 
House?” 

“ No, sir.” 

Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent 
inquiry, “ Then why ain’t you ? ” 


AN ELASTIC FAMILY. 


75 


“ Ain’t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,” rejoins the 
woman and my good man together, “ but our own fam- 
ily.” 

“ How many are you in family ? ” 

The woman takes time to count, under pretence of 
coughing, and adds, as one scant of breath, “ Seven, sir.” 

But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all 
about it, says : 

“ Here ’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of 
your family ? ” 

“ No, Mr. Sharpeye, he ’s a weekly lodger.” 

“ What does he do for a living ? ” 

The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, 
and shortly answers, “ Ain’t got nothing to do.” 

The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a 
damp apron pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance at 
him I become — but I don’t know why — vaguely re- 
minded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. 
When we get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharp- 
eye, addressing Mr. Superintendent, says : 

“ You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby’s ? ” 

“ Yes. What is he?” 

“ Deserter, sir. ” 

Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have 
done with his services, he will step back and take that 
young man. Which in course of time he does : feeling 
at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing for a 
moral certainty that nobody in that region will be gone 
to bed. 

Later still in the night, we came to another parlor up 
a step or two from the street, which was very cleanly, 
neatly, even tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on a 
draped chest of drawers masking the staircase, was such 


76 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


a profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would have 
furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair. It 
backed up a stout old lady — Hogarth drew her exact 
likeness more than once — and a boy who was carefully 
writing a copy in a copy-book. 

“ Well, ma’am, how do you do ? ” 

Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly. 
Charmingly, charmingly. And overjoyed to see us ! 

“ Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing 
his copy. In the middle of the night ! ” 

“ So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome 
faces and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the 
Play with a young friend for his diversion, and he com- 
binates his improvement with entertainment, by doing 
his school-writhing afterwards, God be good to ye ! ” 

The copy admonished human nature, to subjugate 
the fire of every fierce desire. One might have thought 
it recommended stirring the fire, the old lady so ap- 
proved it. There she sat, rosily beaming at the copy- 
book and the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on 
our heads, when we left her in the middle of the night, 
waiting for Jack. 

Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room 
with an earth floor, into which the refuse scum of an 
alley trickled. The stench of this habitation was abomi- 
nable ; the seeming poverty of it, diseased and dire. Yet, 
here again, was visitor or lodger — a man sitting before 
the fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently 
not distasteful to the mistress’s niece who was also be- 
fore the fire. The mistress herself had the misfortune 
of being in jail. 

Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, 
were at needlework at a table in this room. Says 


MAKING MONEY-BAGS. 


77 


Trampfoot to First Witch, “What are you making ?” 
Says she, “ Money-bags.” 

“ What are you making ? ” retorts Trampfoot, a little 
off his balance. 

“ Bags to hold your money,” says the witch, shaking 
her head, and setting her teeth ; “ you as has got it.” 

She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is 
a heap of such bags. Witch Two laughs at us. Witch 
Three scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all, stitch, stitch. 
First Witch has a red circle round each eye. I fancy it 
like the beginning of the development of a perverted 
diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all round her 
head, she will die in the odor of devilry. 

Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch 
has got behind the table, down by the side of her, there ? 
Witches Two and Three croak angrily, “ Show him the 
child!” 

She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dust- 
heap on the ground. Adjured not to disturb the child, 
she lets it drop again. Thus we find at last that there 
is one child in the world of Entries who goes to bed — 
if this be bed. 

Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to 
work at those bags ? 

How long? First Witch repeats. Going to have sup- 
per presently. See the cups and saucers, and the plates. 

“ Late ? Ay ! But we has to ’arn our supper afore 
we eats it ! ” Both the other witches repeat this after 
First Witch, and take the Uncommercial measurement 
with their eyes, as for a charmed winding-sheet. Some 
grim discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of the 
cave, who will be released from jail to-morrow. Witches 
pronounce Trampfoot “ right there,” when he deems it 


78 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


a trying distance for the old lady to walk ; she shall be 
fetched by niece in a spring-cart. 

As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning 
away, the red marks round her eyes seemed to have al- 
ready grown larger, and she hungrily and thirstily looked 
out beyond me into the dark doorway, to see if Jack 
were there. For, Jack came even here, and the mis- 
tress had got into jail through deluding Jack. 

When I at last ended this night of travel and got to 
bed, I failed to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts 
of Seaman’s Homes (not overdone with strictness), 
and improved dock regulations giving Jack greater ben- 
efit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind’s 
wandering among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards 
the same vermin ran all over my sleep. Evermore, 
when on a breezy day I see Poor Mercantile Jack run- 
ning into port with a fair wind under all sail, I shall 
think of the unsleeping host of devourers who never go 
to bed, and are always in their set traps waiting for 
him. 


NEWSPAPER WINDS. 


79 


YI. 

REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. 

In the late high winds I was blown to a great many 
places — and indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have 
extensive transactions on hand in the article of Air — 
but I have not been blown to any English place lately, 
and I very seldom have blown to any English place in 
my life, where I could get anything good to eat and drink 
in five minutes, or where, if I sought it, I was received 
with a welcome. 

This is a curious thing to consider. But before (stim- 
ulated by my own experiences and the representations 
of many fellow-travellers of every uncommercial and 
commercial degree) I consider it further, I must utter 
a passing word of wonder concerning high winds. 

I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard 
at Walworth. I cannot imagine what Walworth has done, 
' to bring such windy punishment upon itself, as I never 
fail to find recorded in the newspapers when the wind 

! has blown at all hard. Brixton seems to have something 
on its conscience ; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous 
Peckham might be supposed to deserve ; the howling 
neighborhood of Deptford figures largely in the accounts 
of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every wind 
I that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows 
no good ; but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by 


80 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


this time. It must surely be blown away. I have read 
of more chimney-stacks and house-copings coming down 
with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred 
edifices being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from 
the same accursed locality, than I have read of practised 
thieves w T ith the appearance and manners of gentle- 
men — a popular phenomenon w T hich never existed on 
earth out of fiction and a police-report. Again : I won- 
der wdiy people are always blown into the Surrey Canal, 
and into no other piece of water ? Why do people get 
up early and go out in groups, to be blown into the Sur- 
rey Canal ? Do they say to one another, “ Welcome to 
Death, so that we get into the newspapers”? Even 
that would be an insufficient explanation, because even 
then they might sometimes put themselves in the way of 
being blown into the Regent’s Canal, instead of always 
saddling Surrey for the field. Some nameless policeman, 
too, is constantly on the slightest provocation, getting 
himself blown into this same Surrey Canal. Will Sir 
Richard Mayne see to it, and restrain that weak- 
minded and feeble-bodied constable? 

To resume the consideration of the curious question 
of Refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as such, I am 
aware that I never will be a slave — and yet I have 
latent suspicion that there must be some slavery of 
wrong custom in this matter. 

I travel by railroad. I start from home at seven 
or eight in the morning, after • breakfasting hurriedly. 
What with skimming over the open landscape, what 
with mining in the damp bowels of the earth, what 
with banging, booming and shrieking the scores of 
miles away, I am hungry when I arrive at the “ Re- 
freshment” station where I am expected. Please to 


RAILWAY EATABLES. 


81 


observe, expected. I have said, I am hungry ; per- 
haps I might say, with greater point and force, that I 
am to some extent exhausted, and that I need — in 
tbs expressive French sense of the word — to be re- 
stored. What is provided for my restoration ? The 
apartment that is to restore me is a wind-trap, cun- 
ningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that country- 
side, and to communicate a special intensity and ve- 
locity to them as they rotate in two hurricanes : one, 
about my wretched head : one, about my wretched 
legs. The training of the young ladies behind the 
counter who are to restore me, has been from their 
infancy directed to the assumption of a defiant dramatic 
show that I am not expected. It is in vain for me to 
represent to them by my humble and conciliatory man- 
ners, that I wish to be liberal. It is in vain for me to 
represent to myself, for the encouragement of my sinking 
soul, that the young ladies have a pecuniary interest in 
my arrival. Neither my reason nor my feelings can 
make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with 
which I am assured that I am not expected, and not 
wanted. The solitary man among the bottles would 
sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, but he is power- 
less against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of the 
page I make no account, for, he is a boy, and therefore 
the natural enemy of Creation.) Chilling fast, in the 
deadly tornadoes to which my upper t and lower extremi- 
ties are exposed, and subdued by the moral disadvantage 
at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on the re- 
freshments that are to restore me. I find that I must 
either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against 
time and for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with 
flour ; or, I must make myself flaky and sick with Ban- 
6 


82 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


bury cake ; or, I must stuff into my delicate organiza- 
tion, a currant-pincushion which I know will swell into 
immeasurable dimensions when it has got there ; or, I 
must extort from an iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as 
if I were farming an inhospitable soil, some glutinous 
lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie. While thus 
forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on 
the table is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfac- 
tory character, so like the banquet at the meanest and 
shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin to think I must 
have “ brought down ” to supper, the old lady unknown, 
blue with cold, who is setting her teeth on edge with a 
cool orange, at my elbow — that the pastry-cook who has 
compounded for the company on the lowest terms per 
head, is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his contract 
with the stale stock from his window — that, for some 
unexplained reason, the family giving the party have 
become my mortal foes, and have given it on purpose to 
affront me. Or, I fancy that I am “ breaking up ” again, 
at the evening conversazione at school, charged two-and- 
sixpence in the half-year’s bill ; or breaking down again 
at that celebrated evening party given at Mrs. Bogles’s 
boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on which 
occasion Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by a branch 
of the legal profession who got in as the harp, and was 
removed (with the keys and subscribed capital) to a 
place of durance, half an hour prior to tho commence- 
ment of the festivities. 

Take another case. 

Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to 
London by railroad one morning last week, accompanied 
by the amiable and fascinating Mrs. Grazinglands. Mr. 
G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property, and had a 


PASTRY-COOK’S SHOPS. 


83 


little business to transact at the Bank of England, which 
required the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G. Their 
business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed 
the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St. Paul’s Ca- 
thedral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then grad- 
ually beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the 
ten derest of husbands) remarked with sympathy, “ Ara- 
bella, my dear, I fear you are faint.” Mrs. Grazing- 
lands replied, “ Alexander, I am rather faint ; but don’t 
mind me, I shall be better presently.” Touched by the 
feminine meekness of this answer, Mr. Grazinglands 
looked in at a pastry-cook’s window, hesitating as to the 
expediency of lunching at that establishment. He beheld 
nothing to eat, but butter in various forms, slightly 
charged with jam, and languidly frizzling over tepid 
( water. Two ancient turtle-shells, on which was in- 
scribed the legend, “ Soups,” decorated a glass partition 
; ■within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from w r hich a ghastly 
mockery of a marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety 
table, warned the terrified traveller. An oblong box of 
stale and broken pastry at reduced prices, mounted on a 
! stool, ornamented the doorway ; and two high chairs that 
looked as if they were performing on stilts, embellished 
the counter. Over the whole, a young lady presided, 
i whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed the street, 
! announced a deep-seated grievance against society, and 
■j an implacable determination to be avenged. From a 
beetle-haunted kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, 
suggestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazinglands 
| knew, from painful experience, enfeebles the mind, dis- 
; tends the stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and 
tries to ooze out at the eyes. As he decided against 
entering, and turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands, becoming 


84 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


perceptibly weaker, repeated, “ I am rather faint, Alex- 
ander, but don’t mind me.” Urged to new efforts by 
these words of resignation, Air. Grazinglands looked in 
at a cold and floury baker’s shop, where utilitarian buns 
unrelieved by a currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a 
stone filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and a hard 
little old woman with flaxen hair, of an undeveloped- 
farinaceous aspect, as if she had been fed upon seeds. 
He might have entered even here, but for the timely 
remembrance coming upon him that Jairing’s was but 
round the corner. 

Now, Jairing’s being an hotel for families and gentle- 
men, in high repute among the midland counties, Air. 
Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit when he told 
Airs. Grazinglands she should have a chop there. That 
lady, likewise, felt that she was going to see Life. Ar- 
riving on that gay and festive scene, they found the sec- 
ond waiter, in a flabby undress, cleaning the windows 
of the empty coffee-room ; and the first w r aiter, denuded 
of his white tie, making up his cruets behind the Post- 
office Directory. The latter (wdio took them in hand) 
was greatly put out by their patronage, and showed his 
mind to be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity 
of instantly smuggling Airs. Grazinglands into the ob- 
scurest corner of the building. This slighted lady (who 
is the pride of her division of the county) was immedi- 
ately conveyed, by several dark passages, and up and 
down several steps, into a penitential apartment at the 
back of the house, where five invalided old plate-warm- 
ers leaned up against one another under a discarded 
old melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves 
of all the dining-tables in the house lay thick. Also, a 
sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane 


MR. J AIRING’S STYLE OF BUSINESS. 


85 


point of view, murmured “ Bed ” ; while an air of min- 
gled fluffiness and heeltaps, added, “ Second Waiter’s.” 
Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of a mysterious dis- 
trust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming 
partner waited twenty minutes for the smoke (for it 
never came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the sherry, 
half an hour for the table-cloth, forty minutes for the 
knives and forks, three quarters of an hour for the chops, 
and an hour for the potatoes. On settling the little bill 
— which was not much more than the day’s pay of a 
Lieutenant in the navy — Mr. Grazinglands took heart 
to remonstrate against the general quality and cost of his 
reception. To whom the waiter replied, substantially, 
that Jairing’s made it a merit to have accepted him on 
any terms ; “ for,” added the waiter (unmistakably cough- 
ing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her division of 
the county), 66 when indiwiduals is not staying in the 
’Ouse, their favors is not as a rule looked upon as 
making it worth Mr. Jairing’s while ; nor is it, indeed, 
a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.” Finally, Mr. 
and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing’s hotel for 
Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest de- 
pression, scorned by the bar ; and did not recover their 
self-respect for several days. 

Or, take another case. Take your own case. 

You are going off by railway, from any terminus. 
You have twenty minutes for dinner, before you go. 
You want your dinner, and, like Doctor Johnson, Sir, 
you like to dine. You present to your mind, a picture 
of the refreshment table at that terminus. The conven- 
tional shabby evening-party supper — accepted as the 
model for all termini and all refreshment stations, be- 
cause it is the last repast known to this state of existence 


86 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


of which any human creature would partake, but in the 
direst extremity — sickens your contemplation, and your 
words are these : “ I cannot dine on stale sponge-cakes that 
turn to sand in the mouth. I cannot dine on shining 
brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and 
offering to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish 
in leaden pie-crust without. I cannot dine on a sandwich 
that has long been pining under an exhausted receiver. 
I cannot dine on barley-sugar. I cannot dine on Toffee.” 
You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive, agitated, in 
the coffee-room. 

It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very 
cold to you. Account for it how you may, smooth it 
over how you will, you cannot deny that he is cold to 
you. He is not glad to see you, he does not want you, 
he would much rather you had n’t come. He opposes to 
your flushed condition, an immovable composure. As if 
this were not enough, another waiter, born, as it would 
seem, expressly to look at you in this passage of your life, 
stands at a little distance, with his napkin under his arm 
and his hands folded, looking at you with all his might. 
You impress on your waiter that you have ten minutes 
for dinner, and he proposes that you shall begin with a 
bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That propo- 
sal declined, he suggests — as a neat originality — “a 
weal or mutton cutlet.” You close with either cutlet, 
any cutlet, anything. He goes, leisurely, behind a door 
and calls down some unseen shaft. A ventriloquial dia- 
logue ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal only, 
is available on the spur of the moment. You anxiously 
call out, “Veal, then ! ” Your waiter, having settled that 
point, returns to array your table-cloth, w r ith a table nap- 
kin folded cocked-hat wise (slowly, for something out of 


WAITER BONDAGE. 


87 


window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green 
wine glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful 
field-battery of fourteen castors with nothing in them ; 
or at all events — which is enough for your purpose — 
with nothing in them that will come out. All this time, 
the other waiter looks at you — with an air of mental 
comparison and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to 
him that you are rather like his brother. Half your 
time gone, and nothing come but the jug of ale and the 
bread, you implore your waiter to “ see after that cutlet, 
waiter ; pray do ! ” He cannot go at once, for he is car- 
rying in seventeen pounds of American cheese for you to 
finish with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and 
water-cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and 
takes a new view of you — doubtfully, now, as if he had 
rejected the resemblance to his brother, and had begun to 
think you more like his aunt or his grandmother. Again 
you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation, to 
“ see after that cutlet ! ” He steps out to see after it, 
and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, 
comes back with it. Even then, he will not take the 
sham silver cover off, without a pause for a flourish, 
and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised to 
see it — which cannot possibly be the case, he must have 
seen it so often before. A sort of fur has been produced 
upon its surface by the cook’s art, and, in a sham silver 
vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a cuta- 
neous kind of sauce, of brown pimples and pickled cu- 
cumber. You order the bill, but your waiter cannot bring 
your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead, three flinty- 
hearted potatoes and two grim head of broccoli, like the 
occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled. You 
know that you will never come to this pass, any more 


88 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


than to the cheese and celery, and you imperatively 
demand your bill ; but, it takes time to get, even when 
gone for, because your waiter has to communicate with a 
lady who lives behind a sash-w 7 indow in a corner, and 
who appears to have to refer to several Ledgers before 
she can make it out — as if you had been staying there 
a year. You become distracted to get away, and the 
other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at 
you — but suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to re- 
mind him of the party who took the great-coats last win- 
ter. Your bill at last brought and paid, at the rate of 
sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds 
you that “ attendance is not charged for a single meal,” 
and you have to search in all your pockets for sixpence 
more. He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when 
you have given it to him, and lets you out into the street 
with the air of one saying to himself, as you cannot doubt 
he is, “ I hope we shall never see you here again ! ” 

Or, take any other of the numerous travelling in- 
stances in which, with more time at your disposal, you are, 
have been, or may be, equally ill served. Take the old- 
established Bull’s Head with its old-established knife- 
boxes on its old-established sideboards, its old-established 
flue under its old-established four-post bedsteads in its 
old-established airless rooms, its old-established frouzi- 
ness up-stairs and down-stairs, its old-established cookery, 
and its old-established principles of plunder. Count up 
your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in 
white poultices, of apothecaries’ powders in rice for curry, 
of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an 
adventitious interest on forcemeat balls. You have had 
experience of the old-established Bull’s Head’s stringy 
fowls, with lower extremities like wooden legs, sticking 


OLD AND NEW HOTELS. 


89 


up out of the dish ; its cannibalic boiled mutton, gush- 
ing horribly among its capers, when carved ; of its little 
dishes of pastry — roofs • of spermaceti ointment, erected 
over half an apple or four gooseberries. Well for you if 
you have yet forgotten the old-established Bull’s Head’s 
fruity port : whose reputation was gained solely by the 
old-established price the Bull’s Head put upon it, and by 
the old-established air with which the Bull’s Head set the 
glasses and D’Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to 
the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-estab- 
lished color had n’t come from the dyer’s. 

Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all 
know, every day. 

We all know the new hotel near the station, where it 
is always gusty, going up the lane which is always mud- 
dy, where we are sure to arrive at night, and where we 
make the gas start aw’fully when we open the front door. 
We all know the flooring of the passages and staircases 
that is too new, and the walls that are too new, and the 
house that is haunted by the ghost of mortar. We all 
know the doors that have cracked, and the cracked shut- 
ters through which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate 
moon. We all know the new people who have come to 
keep the new hotel, and who wish they had never Come, 
and who (inevitable result) wish we had never come. 
We all know how much too scant and smooth and bright 
the new furniture is, and how it has never settled down, 
and cannot fit itself into right places, and will get into 
wrong places. We all know how the gas, being lighted, 
shows maps of Damp upon the walls. We all know how 
the ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our 
negus, goes up to bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom 
chimney, and prevents the smoke from following. We 


90 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


all know how a leg of our chair comes off, at breakfast 
in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes 
the accident to a general greenness pervading the estab- 
lishment, and informs us, in reply to a local inquiry, that 
he is thankful to say he is an entire stranger in that part 
of the country, and is going back to his own connection 
on Saturday. 

We all know, on the other hand, the great station 
hotel belonging to the company of proprietors, which has 
suddenly sprung up in the back outskirts of any place 
we like to name, and where we look out of our palatial 
windows, at little backyards and gardens, old summer- 
houses, fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties. We all 
know this hotel in which we can get anything we want, 
after its kind, for money ; but where nobody is glad to 
see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether 
we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about 
us. We all know this hotel, where we have no individ- 
uality, but put ourselves into the general post, as it were, 
and are sorted and disposed of according to our division. 
We all know that we can get on very well indeed at such 
a place, but still not perfectly well ; and this may be, 
because the place is largely wholesale, and there is a lin- 
gering personal retail interest within us that asks to be 
satisfied. 

To sum up. My uncommercial travelling has not yet 
brought me to the conclusion that we are close to perfec- 
tion in these matters. And just as I do not believe that 
the end of the world will ever be near at hand, so long 
as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people who con- 
stantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall 
have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any of 
the uncomfortable superstitions I have glanced at remain 
in existence. 


THE GERMAN CHARIOT. 


91 


VII. 

TRAVELLING ABROAD. 

I got into the travelling chariot — it was of German 
make, roomy, heavy, and unvarnished — I got into the 
travelling chariot, pulled up the steps after me, shut my- 
self in with a smart bang of the door, and gave the word 
“ Go on ! ” 

Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of Lon- 
don began to slide away at a pace so lively, that I was 
over the river, and past the Old Kent-road, and out on 
Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter’s Hill, before 
I had had time to look about me in the carriage, like a 
collected traveller. 

I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted 
storage for luggage in front, and other up behind ; I had 
a net for books overhead, great pockets to all the win- 
dows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for odds and ends, 
and a reading-lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in 
case I should be benighted. I was amply provided in all 
respects, and had no idea where I was going (which was 
delightful), except that I was going abroad. 

So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the 
horses, and so fast w r ent I, that it was midway between 
Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river was 
bearing the ships, white-sailed or black-smoked, out to 
sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small 
boy. 


92 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ Halloa ! ” said I, to the very queer small boy, a where 
do you live ? ” 

“ At Chatham,” says he. 

“ What do you do there ? ” says I. 

" I go to school,” says he. 

I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Pres- 
ently, the very queer small boy says, “ This is Gadshill 
we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those 
travellers, and ran away.” 

“ You know something about Falstaff, eh ? ” said I. 

u All about him,” said the very queer small boy. “ I 
am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But 
do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house 
there, if you please ! ” 

“ You admire that house ? ” said I. 

“ Bless you, sir,” said the very queer small boy, “ when 
I w r as not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a 
treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now, I am 
nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I 
can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often 
said to me, ‘ If you were to be very persevering and were 
to work hard, you might some day come to live in it.’ 
Though that ’s impossible ! ” said the very queer small 
boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house 
out of window with all his might. 

I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer 
small boy ; for that house happens to be my house, and 
I have reason to believe that what he said was true. 

Well! I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the 
very queer small boy and w T ent on. Over the road 
where the old Romans used to march, over the road 
where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go, over the 
road where the travelling trains of the old imperious 


FROM ENGLAND TO FRANCE. 


93 


priests and princes used to jingle on horseback between 
the continent and this Island through the mud and water, 
over the road where Shakspeare hummed to himself, 
“ Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” as he sat in the saddle 
at the gate of the inn-yard noticing the carriers ; all 
among the cherry-orchards, apple-orchards, corn-fields, 
and hop-gardens ; so Vent I, by Canterbury to Dover. 
There, the sea was tumbling in, with deep sounds, after 
dark, and the revolving French light on Cape Grinez 
was seen regularly bursting out and becoming obscured, 
as if the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious 
state of mind were interposed every half minute, to look 
how it was burning. 

Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam- 
packet, and we were aiming at the bar in the usual in- 
tolerable manner, and the bar was aiming at us in the 
usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by far the best 
of it, and we got by far the worst — all in the usual in- 
tolerable manner. 

But, when I was clear of the Custom-House on the 
other side, and when I began to make the dust fly on the 
thirsty French roads, and when the twigsome trees by 
the wayside (which, I suppose, never will grow leafy, 
for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty sol- 
dier, or field-laborer, baking on a heap of broken stones, 
sound asleep in a fiction of shade, I began to recover 
my travelling spirits. Coming upon the breaker of the 
broken stones, in a hard hot shining hat, on which the 
sun played at a distance as on a burning-glass, I felt that 
now, indeed, I was in the dear old France of my affec- 
tions. I should have known it, without the well re- 
membered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast 
fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched 


94 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


with unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed 
pockets of the chariot. 

I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a 
bright face looked in at the window, I started, and said : 

“ Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead 1 ” 

My cheerful servant laughed, and answered : 

“ Me ? Not at all, sir.” 

“ How glad I am to wake ! What are we doing, 
Louis ? ” 

“ We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up 
the hill ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

Welcome the old French hill, with the old French 
lunatic (not in the most distant degree related to Sterne’s 
Maria) living in a thatched dog-kennel half way up, 
and flying out with his crutch and his big head and ex- 
tended nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men and 
women exhibiting crippled children, and with the chil- 
dren exhibiting old men and women, ugly and blind, who 
always seemed by resurrectionary process to be recalled 
out of the elements for the sudden peopling of the soli- 
tude ! 

“ It is well,” said I, scattering among them what small 
coin I had ; “ here comes Louis, and I am quite roused 
from my nap.” 

We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new 
assurance that France stood where I had left it. There 
were the posting-houses, with their archways, dirty sta- 
ble-yards, and clean postmasters’ wives, bright women 
of business, looking on at the putting-to of the horses ; 
there were the postilions counting what money they got, 
into their hats, and never making enough of it; there 
were the standard population of gray horses of Flanders 


OLD FRENCH HIGHWAYS. 


95 


descent, invariably biting one another when they got a 
chance ; there were the fleecy sheepskins, looped on 
over their uniforms by the postilions, like bibbed aprons, 
when it blew and rained ; there were their jack-boots, 
and their cracking whips ; there were the cathedrals that 
I got out to see, as under some cruel bondage, in nowise 
desiring to see them; there were the little towns that 
appeared to have no reason for being towns, since most 
of their houses were to let and nobody could be induced 
to look at them, except the people who could n’t let them 
and had nothing else to do but look at them all day. I 
lay a night upon the road and enjoyed delectable cook- 
ery of potatoes, and some other sensible things, adop- 
tion of which at home would inevitably be shown to be 
fraught with ruin, somehow or other, to that rickety 
national blessing, the British farmer ; and at last I was 
rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of stones, 
until — madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing two 
gray tails about — I made my triumphal entry into 
Paris. 

At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days 
in one of the hotels of the Rue de Rivoli : my front 
windows looking into the garden of the Tuileries (where 
the principal difference between the nursemaids and the 
flowers seemed to be that the former were locomotive 
and the latter not) : my back windows looking at all 
the other back windows in the hotel, and deep down 
into a paved yard, where my German chariot had retired 
under a tight-fitting archway, to all appearance, for life, 
and where bells rang all day without anybody’s minding 
them but certain chamberlains with feather brooms and 
green baize caps, who here and there leaned out of some 
high window placidly looking down, and where neat 


96 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


waiters with trays on their left shoulders passed and 
repassed from morning to night. 

Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible 
force into the Morgue. I never want to go there, but 
am always pulled there. One Christmas Day, when I 
would rather have been anywhere else, I was attracted 
in, to see an old gray man lying all alone on his cold 
bed, with a tap of water turned on over his gray hair, 
and running, drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face 
until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it took a 
turn, and made him look sly. One New-Year’s Morning 
(by the same token, the sun was shining outside, and 
there was a mountebank balancing a feather on his nose, 
within a yard of the gate), I was pulled in again, to 
look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen with a heart 
hanging on his breast — “ from his mother,” was en- 
graven on it — who had come into the net across the 
river, with a bullet-wound in his fair forehead and his 
hands cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank 
mystery. This time, I was forced into the same dread 
place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement by 
water w r as in a frightful manner, comic, and whose ex- 
pression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his 
eyelids under a heavy blow, but was going immediately 
to open them, shake his head, and “ come up smiling.” 
0 what this large dark man cost me in that bright city ! 

It was very hot weather, and he was none the better 
for that, and I was much the worse. Indeed, a very 
neat and pleasant little woman with the key of her 
lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing him to 
her little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats, ob- 
served monsieur looking poorly as we came out together, 
and asked monsieur, with her wondering little eyebrows 


THE MORGUE. 


97 


prettily raised, if there were anything the matter ? 
Faintly replying in the negative, monsieur crossed the 
road to a wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to 
freshen himself with a dip in the great floating bath on 
i the river. 

The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a 
i male population in striped drawers of various gay colors, 
! who walked up and down arm in arm, drank coffee, 
smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed politely with 
the damsels who dispensed the towels, and every now 
and then pitched themselves into the river head foremost, 

I and came out again to repeat this social routine. I made 
haste to participate in the water part of the entertain- 
ments, and was in the full enjoyment of a delightful 
bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an un- 
reasonable idea that the large dark body was floating 
; straight at ' me. 

I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. In the 
j shock I had taken some water into my mouth, and it 
turned me sick, for I fancied that the contamination of 
the creature was in it. I had got back to my cool dark- 
ened room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, 
j: before I began to reason with myself, 
j Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark 
1 creature was stone-dead, and that I should no more come 
1 upon him out of the place where I had seen him dead, 
j than I should come upon the cathedral of Notre-Dame 
; in an entirely new situation. What troubled me was 
! the picture of the creature ; and that had so curiously 
j and strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I could 
I not get rid of it until it was worn out. 

I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it 
i was a real discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, 
7 


98 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

some morsel on my plate looked like a piece of him, and 
I was glad to get up and go out. Later in the evening, 
I was walking along the Rue St. Honore, when I saw a 
bill at a public room there, announcing small-sword ex- 
ercise, broad-sword exercise, wrestling, and other such 
feats. I went in, and some of the sword-play being very 
skilful, remained. A specimen of our own national 
sport, The British Boaxe, was announced to be given at 
the close of the evening. In an evil hour, I determined 
to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton. It was a 
clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out 
of place), but, one of the combatants, receiving a straight 
right-hander with the glove between his eyes, did exactly 
what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed 
going to do — and finished me for that night. 

There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual 
fragrance in Paris) in the little ante-room of my apart- 
ment at the hotel. The large dark creature in the 
Morgue was by no direct experience associated with my 
sense of smell, because, when I came to the knowledge of 
him, he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass, as good as 
a wall of steel or marble for that matter. Yet the whiff 
of the room never failed to reproduce him. What was 
more curious, was the capriciousness with which his por- 
trait seemed to light itself up in my mind, elsewhere. I 
might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the 
shop-windows, and might be regaling myself with one of 
the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there. 
My eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted dressing- 
gowns and luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the mas- 
ter, or the shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, 
and would suggest to me, “ Something like him ! ” and 
instantly I was sickened again. 


HAUNTED. 


99 


This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner. 
Often it would happen in the street, when I certainly 
was not looking for the likeness, and when probably 
there was no likeness there. It was not because the 
creature was dead that I was so haunted, because I know 
that I might have been (and I know it because I have 
been) equally attended by the image of a living aversion. 
This lasted about a week. The picture did not fade by 
degrees, in the sense that it became a whit less forcible 
and distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself less 
and less frequently. The experience may be worth con- 
sidering by some who have the care of children. It 
would be difficult to overstate the intensity and accuracy 
of an intelligent child’s observation. At that impressible 
time of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impres- 
sion. If the fixed impression be of an object terrible 
to the child, it will be (for want of reasoning upon) insep- 
arable from great fear. Force the child at such a time, 
be Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, 
leave it in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had 
better murder it. 

On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the 
German chariot, and left the large dark creature behind 
me for good. I ought to confess, though, that I had 
been drawn back to the Morgue, after he was put under 
ground, to look at his clothes, and that I found them 
frightfully like him — particularly his boots. However, 
I rattled away for Switzerland, looking forward and not 
backward, and so we parted company. 

Welcome again, the long long spell of France, with 
the queer country inns, full of vases of flowers and 
clocks, in the dull little towns, and with the little pop- 
ulation not at all dull on the little Boulevard in the 


100 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


evening, under the little trees ! Welcome Monsieur the 
Cure walking alone in the early morning a short way ' 
out of the town, reading that eternal Breviary of yours, j 
which surely might be almost read, without book, by this j 
time? Welcome Monsieur the Cure, later in the day, 
jolting through the highway dust (as if you had already 
ascended to the cloudy region), in a very big-headed i 
cabriolet, with the dried mud of a dozen winters on it. 
Welcome again Monsieur the Cure, as we exchange sal- 
utations : you, straightening your back to look at the 
German chariot, while picking in your little village- 
garden a vegetable or two for the day’s soup : I, looking ( 
out of the German chariot window in that delicious trav- 
eller’s-trance which knows no cares, no yesterdays, no 
to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and the 
passing scents and sounds ! And so I came, in due 
course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet 
Sunday evening at a window, while an idle trifle of a 
vaudeville was played for me at the opposite house. 

How such a large house came to have only three peo- 
ple living in it, was its own affair. There were at least 
a score of windows in its high roof alone ; how many in 
its grotesque front, I soon gave up counting. The owner 
was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim ; by trade — 

I could n’t make out what by trade, for he had forborne 
to write that up, and his shop was shut. 

At first, as I looked at Straudenheim’s, through the 
steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the 
goose-liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim, who 
became visible at a window on the second floor, con- 
vinced me that there was something more precious than 
liver in the case. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and 
looked usurious and rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old 


STRAUDENHEIM’S. 


101 


man, with white hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted. 
He was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever 
and again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and 
went through actions with his right hand, like a man 
steadying piles of cash. Five-franc pieces, Strauden- 
heim, or golden Napoleons ? A jeweller, Straudenheim, 
a dealer in money, a diamond merchant, or what ? 

Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, 
sat his housekeeper — far from young, but of a comely 
presence, suggestive of a well-matured foot and ankle. 
She was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and 
wore large gold ear-rings and a large gold cross. She 
would have been out holiday-making, (as I settled it) 
but for the pestilent rain. Strasbourg had given up 
holiday-making for that once, as a bad job, because the 
rain was jerking in gushes out of the old roof-spouts, 
and running in a brook down the middle of the street. 
The housekeeper, her arms folded on her bosom and her 
fan tapping her chin, was bright and smiling at her 
open window, but otherwise Stratfdenheim’s house-front 
was very dreary. The housekeeper’s was the only open 
window in it ; Straudenheim kept himself close, though 
it was a sultry evening when air is pleasant, and though 
the rain had brought into the town that vague refreshing 
j smell of grass which rain does bring in the summer- 
i time. 

The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim’s 
shoulder, inspired me with a misgiving that somebody 
had come to murder that flourishing merchant for the 
wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him : the 
rather, as it was an excited man, lean and long of figure, 
and evidently stealthy of foot. But, he conferred with 
Straudenheim instead of doing him a mortal injury, and 


102 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


then they both softly opened the other window of that 
room — which was immediately over the . housekeeper’s 
— and tried to see her by looking down. And my opin- 
ion of Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw that 
eminent citizen spit out of window, clearly with the hope 
of spitting on the housekeeper. 

The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her 
head, and laughed. Though unconscious of Strauden- 
heim, she was conscious of somebody else — of me ? — 
there was nobody else. 

After leaning so far out of window, that I confi- 
dently expected to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim 
and the lean man drew their heads in and shut the win- 
dow. Presently, the house-door secretly opened, and 
they slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring 
rain. They were coming over to me (I thought) to I 
demand satisfaction for my looking at the housekeeper, 
when they plunged into a recess in the architecture un- 
der my window and dragged out the puniest of little sol- 
diers, begirt with the most innocent of little swords. 
The tall glazed head-dress of this warrior, Straudenheim 
instantly knocked off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks, 
and three or four large lumps of sugar. 

The warrior made no effort to recover his property or 
to pick up his shako, but looked with an expression of 
attention at Straudenheim when he kicked him five times, 
and also at the lean man when he kicked him five time3, 
and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast of 
his (the warrior’s) little coat open, and shook all his ten 
fingers in his face, as if they were ten thousand. When 
these outrages had been committed, Straudenheim and 
his man went into the house again and barred the door. 

A wonderful circumstance was, that the housekeeper who 


LITTLE WARRIORS. 


103 


saw it all (and who could have taken six such warriors 
to her buxom bosom at once), only fanned herself and 
laughed as she had laughed before, and seemed to have 
no opinion about it, one way or other. 

But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable 
vengeance taken by the little warrior. Left alone in the 
rain, he picked up his shako ; put it on, all wet and dirty 
as it was ; retired into a court, of which Straudenheim’s 
house formed the corner ; wheeled about ; and bringing 
his two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed 
them over one another, crosswise, in derision, defiance, 
and contempt of Straudenheim. Although Straudenheim 
could not possibly be supposed to be conscious of this 
strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the lit- 
tle warrior’s soul, that twice he went away, and twice 
came back into the court to repeat it, as though it must 
goad his enemy to madness. Not only that, but he after- 
wards came back with two other small warriors, and they 
all three did it together. Not only that — as I live to 
tell the tale ! — but just as it was falling quite dark, the 
three came back, bringing with them a huge bearded 
Sapper, whom they moved, by recital of the original 
wrong, to go through the same performance, with the 
same complete absence of all possible knowledge of it 
on the part of Straudenheim. And then they all went 
away, arm in arm, singing. 

I went away, too, in the German chariot, at sunrise, 
and rattled on, day after day, like one in a sweet dream ; 
with so many clear little bells on the harness of the 
horses, that the nursery rhyme about Banbury Cross and 
the venerable lady who rode in state there, was always 
in my ears. And now I came to the land of wooden 
houses, innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless lit- 


104 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


tie inn-bedrooms with a family likeness to Dairies. And 
now the Swiss marksmen were forever rifle-shooting at 
marks across gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I 
felt like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went 
in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical life. The 
prizes at these shootings, were watches, smart handker- 
chiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays ; and at 
these contests I came upon a more than usually accom- 
plished and amiable countryman of my own, who had 
shot himself deaf in whole years of competition, and 
had won so many tea-trays that he went about the coun- 
try with his carriage full of them, like a glorified Cheap- 
Jack. 

In the mountain country into which I had now travel- 
led, a yoke of oxen were sometimes hooked on before the 
post-horses, and I went lumbering up, up, up, through 
mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for change 
of music. Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away, 
and I would come down into picturesque little towns 
with gleaming spires and odd towers ; and would stroll 
afoot into market-places in steep winding streets, where 
a hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter 
and fruit, and suckled their children as they sat by their 
clean baskets, and had such enormous goitres (or glan- 
dular swellings in the throat) that it became a science 
to know where the nurse ended and the child began. 
About this time, I deserted my German chariot for the 
back of a mule (in color and consistency so very like a 
dusty old hair trunk I once had at school, that I half ex- 
pected to see my initials in brass-headed nails on his 
backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and 
looked down at a thousand woods of fir and pine, and 
would on the whole have preferred my mule’s keeping a 


ALPINE. 


105 


little nearer to the inside, and not usually travelling with 
a hoof or two over the precipice — though much consoled 
by explanation that this was to be attributed to his great 
sagacity, by reason of his carrying broad loads of wood 
at other times, and not being clear but that I myself be- 
longed to that station of life, and required as much room 
as they. He brought me safely, in his own wise way, 
j among the passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen 
' climates a day ; being now (like Don Quixote on the 
back of the wooden horse) in the region of wind, now in 
the region of fire, now in the region of unmelting ice 
and snow. Here, I passed over trembling domes of ice, 
beneath which the cataract was roaring ; and here was 
received under arches of icicles, of unspeakable beauty ; 
and here the sweet air was so bracing and so light, that 
at halting-times I rolled in the snow when I saw my 
male do it, thinking that he must know best. At this 
part of the journey we would come, at mid-day, into half 
an hour’s thaw : when the rough mountain inn would 
be found on an island of deep mud in a sea of snow, 
while the baiting strings of mules, and the carts full of 
casks and bales, which had been in an Arctic condition a 
mile off, would steam again. By such ways and means, 
I would come to the cluster of chalets where I had to 
| turn out of the track to see the waterfall ; and then, ut- 
i tering a howl like a young giant, on espying a traveller 
; — in other words, something to eat — coming up the 
steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself 
and nursed his goitre, would rouse the woman-guide 
within the hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing 
her child over one of her shoulders and her goitre over 
the other, as she came along. I slept at religious houses, 
and bleak refuges of many kinds, on this journey, and by 


106 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the stove at night heard stories of travellers who had 
perished within call, in wreaths and drifts of snow. One 
night the stove within, and the cold outside, awakened 
childish associations long forgotten, and I dreamed I was 
in Russia — the identical serf out of a picture-book I 
had, before I could read it for myself — and that I was 
going to be knouted by a noble personage in a fur cap, 
boots, and ear-rings, who, I think, must have come out of 
some melodrama. 

Commend me to the beautiful waters among these 
mountains ! Though I was not of their mind : they, 
being inveterately bent on getting down into the level 
country, and I ardently desiring to linger where I was. 
What desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses they 
plunged into, what rocks they wore away, what echoes 
they invoked ! In one part where I went, they were 
pressed into the service of carrying wood down, to be 
burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy. But, their 
fierce savage n? + ure was not to be easily constrained, and 
they fought with every limb of the wood, whirling it 
round and round, stripping its bark away, dashing it 
against pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and 
roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it back 
again from the bank with long stout poles. Alas ! con- 
current streams of time and water carried me down fast, 
and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to the Lausanne 
shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at 
the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains oppo- 
site, and the boats at my feet with their furled Mediter- 
ranean sails, showing like enormous magnifications of 
this goose-quill pen that is now in my hand. 

— The sky became overcast without any notice ; a 
wind very like the March east wind of England, blew 


THE GERMAN CHARIOT. 


107 


across me ; and a voice said, “ How do you like it ? Will 
it do?” 

I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a Ger- 
man travelling chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage 
Department of the London Pantechnicon. I had a com- 
mission to buy it, for a friend who was going abroad ; 
and the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the 
cushions and the springs, brought all these hints of trav- 
elling remembrance before me. 

“ It will do very well,” said I, rather sorrowfully, as I 
got out at the other door, and shut the carriage up. 


108 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


VIII. 

THE GREAT TASMANIA’S CARGO. 

I travel constantly, up and down a certain line of 
railway that has a terminus in London. It is the railway 
for a large military depot, and for other large barracks. 
To the best of my serious belief, I have never been on 
that railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed 
deserters in the train. 

It is in the nature of things that such an institution as 
our English army should have many bad and troublesome 
characters in it. But, this is a reason for, and not against, 
its being made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed 
men of decent behavior. Such men are assuredly not 
tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of nat- 
ural laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than 
swinish foulness. Accordingly, when any such Circum- 
locutional embellishments of the soldier’s condition have 
of late been brought to notice, we civilians, seated in outer 
darkness cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have 
considered the matter as being our business, and have 
shown a tendency to declare that we would rather not 
have it misregulated, if such declaration may, without 
violence to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those 
who are put in authority over us. 

Any animated description of a modem battle, any 
private soldier’s letter published in the newspapers, any 
page of the records of the Victoria Cross, will show that 


DISCHARGED SOLDIERS. 


109 


in the ranks of the army, there exists under all disad- 
vantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any 
station on earth. Who doubts that if we all did our duty 
as faithfully as the soldier does his, this world would be a 
better place ? There may be greater difficulties in our 
way than in the soldier’s. Not disputed. But, let us at 
least do our duty towards him . 

I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port 
where I had looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was 
walking up a hill there, on a wild March morning. My 
conversation with my official friend Pangloss, by whom I 
was accidentally accompanied, took this direction as we 
took the up-hill direction, because the object of my un- 
commercial journey was to see some discharged soldiers 
who had recently come home from India. There were 
men of Havelock’s among them ; there were men who 
had been in many of the great battles of the great Indian 
campaign, among them ; and I was curious to note what 
our discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done 
with. 

I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my 
official friend Pangloss) because these men had claimed 
to be discharged, when their right to be discharged was 
not admitted. They had behaved with unblemished 
fidelity and bravery ; but, a change of circumstances had 
arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their 
compact and entitled them to enter on a new one. Their 
demand had been blunderingly resisted by the authorities 
in India ; but, it is to be presumed that the men were 
not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in 
their being sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders 
from home. (There was an immense waste of money, of 
course.) 


110 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Under these circumstances — thought I, as I walked up 
the hill, on which I accidentally encountered my official 
friend — under these circumstances of the men having 
successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Depart- 
ment of that great Circumlocution Office on which the 
sun never sets and the light of reason never rises, the 
Pagoda Department will have been particularly careful 
of the national honor. It will have shown these men, in 
the scrupulous good faith, not to say the generosity, of 
its dealing with them, that great national authorities can 
have no small retaliations and revenges. It will have 
made every provision for their health on the passage 
home, and will have landed them, restored from their 
campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound 
food, and good medicines. And I pleased myself with 
dwelling beforehand, on the great accounts of their per- 
sonal treatment which these men would carry into their 
various towns and villages, and on the increasing pop- 
ularity of the service that would insensibly follow. I 
almost began to hope that the hitherto never-failing de- 
serters on my railroad, would by-and-by become a phe- 
nomenon. 

In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the work- 
house of Liverpool. — For, the cultivation of laurels in a 
sandy soil, had brought the soldiers in question to that 
abode of Glory.. 

Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired 
how they had made their triumphant entry there ? They 
had been brought through the rain in carts, it seemed, 
from the landing-place to the gate, and had then been 
carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers. Their groans 
and pains during the performance of this glorious pageant, 
had been so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes of 


MY OFFICIAL FRIEND PANGLOSS. 


Ill 


spectators but too well accustomed to scenes of suffering. 
The men were so dreadfully cold, that those who could 
get near the fires were hard to be restrained from thrust- 
ing their feet in among the blazing coals. They were so 
horribly reduced, that they were awful to look upon. 

| Racked with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one 
hundred and forty wretched soldiers had been revived 
with brandy and laid in bed. 

My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from 
a learned doctor of that name, who was once tutor to 
Candide, an ingenious young gentleman of some celeb- 
rity. In his personal character, he is as humane and 
worthy a gentleman as any I know ; in his official capac- 
ity, he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of his re- 
nowned ancestor, by demonstrating on all occasions that 
we live in the best of all possible official worlds. 

“ In the name of Humanity,” said I, “ how did the 
men fall into this deplorable state ? Was the ship well 
found in stores ? ” 

“ I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of 
my own knowledge,” answered Pangloss, “ but I have 
grounds for asserting that the stores were the best of all 
possible stores.” 

A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten 
biscuit, and a handful of split peas. The biscuit was a 
honeycombed heap of maggots, and the excrement of 
maggots. The peas were even harder than this filth. 
A similar handful had been experimentally boiled, six 
hours, and had shown no signs of softening. These were 
the stores on which the soldiers had been fed. 

“ The beef” I began, when Pangloss cut me 

short. 

“ Was the best of all possible beef,” said he. 


112 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence 
given at the Coroner’s Inquest, holden on some of the 
men (who had obstinately died of their treatment), and 
from that evidence it appeared that the beef was the 
worst of all possible beef ! 

“ Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my 
stand,” said Pangloss, “ by the pork, which was the best 
of all possible pork.” 

“ But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so 
misuse the word,” said I. “ Would any Inspector who 
did his duty, pass such abomination ? ” 

“ It ought not to have been passed,” Pangloss admit- 
ted. 

“ Then the authorities out there ” I began, when 

Pangloss cut me short again. 

“ There would certainly seem to have been something 
wrong somewhere,” said he ; “ but I am prepared to 
prove that the authorities out there, are the best of all 
possible authorities.” 

I never heard of any impeached public authority in my 
life, who was not the best public authority in existence. 

“ We are told of these unfortunate men being laid 
low by scurvy,” said I. “ Since lime-juice has been reg- 
ularly stored and served out in our navy, surely that 
disease, which used to devastate it, has almost disap- 
peared ? Was there lime-juice aboard this transport ?” 

My official friend was beginning “ the best of all pos- 
sible ” when an inconvenient medical forefinger 

pointed out another passage in the evidence, from which 
it appeared that the lime-juice had been bad too. Not 
to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the vege- 
tables bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient 
x (if there had been anything worth mentioning to cook), 


A SHOCKING SIGHT. 


113 


the water supply exceedingly inadequate, and the beer 
sour. 

“ Then, the men,” said Pangloss, a little irritated, 
“were the worst of all possible men.” 

“ In what respect ? ” I asked. 

“ Oh ! Habitual drunkards,” said Pangloss. 

But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger 
pointed out another passage in the evidence, showing that 
the dead men had been examined after death, and that 
they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual 
drunkards, because the organs within them which must 
have shown traces of that habit, were perfectly sound. 

“And besides,” said the three doctors present, one 
and all, “habitual drunkards brought as low as these 
men have been, could not recover under care and food, 
as the great majority of these men are recovering. 
They would not have strength of constitution to do it.” 

“ Keckless and improvident dogs, then,” said Pangloss. 
“ Always are — nine times out of ten.” 

I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked 
him whether the men had any money ? 

“ Money ? ” said he. “ I have in my iron safe, nearly 
four hundred pounds of theirs ; the agents have nearly 
a hundred pounds more ; and many of them have left 
money in Indian banks besides.” 

“ Hah ! ” said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, “ this 
is not the best of all possible stories, I doubt ! ” 

We went into a large ward, containing some twenty 
or five-and-twenty beds. We went into several such 
wards, one after another. I find it very difficult to in- 
dicate what a shocking sight I saw in them, without 
frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines, 
and defeating my object of making it known. 

8 


114 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked be- 
tween the rows of beds, or — worse still — that glazedly 
looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared 
for nothing ! Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly 
covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone 
in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm 
above the elbow, in my finger and thumb. Here, lay a 
man with the black scurvy eating his legs away, his 
gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare. This bed 
was empty, because gangrene had set in, and the patient 
had died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one, 
because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be , 
roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the 
pillow, with a feeble moan. The awful thinness of the 
fallen cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep-set eyes, 
the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent hu- 
man images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of 
solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died 
aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the sea, 

O Pangloss, God forgive you ! 

In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as 
it was hoped) by deep incisions in the feet and legs. 
While 1 was speaking to him, a nurse came up to change 
the poultices which this operation had rendered neces- 
sary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well 
to turn away, merely to spare myself. He was sorely 
wasted and keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to 
subdue any expression of impatience or suffering, were 
quite heroic. It was easy to see, in the shrinking of 
the figure, and the drawing of the bedclothes over the 
head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me 
shrink too, as if I were in pain ; but, when the new 
bandages were on, and the poor feet were composed 


HARD TO PULL THROUGH. 


115 


again, he made an apology for himself (though he had 
not uttered a word), and said plaintively, “ I am so ten- 
der and weak, you see, sir!” Neither from him nor 
from any one sufferer of the ghastly number, did I hear 
a complaint. Of thankfulness for* present solicitude and 
care, I heard much ; of complaint, not a word. 

I think I could have recognized in the dismalest skele- 
ton there, the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old 
air was still latent in the palest shadow of life I talked 
to. One emaciated creature, in the strictest literality 
worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking so 
like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not 
dying, or dead ? A few kind words from the doctor, in 
his ear, and he opened his eyes, and smiled — looked, in 
I a moment, as if he would have made a salute, if he could. 

1 “We shall pull him through, please God,” said the Doc- 
i tor. “ Plase God, surr, and thankye,” said the patient. 

“You are much better to-day ; are you not?” said the 
| Doctor. “Plase God, surr; ’t is the slape I want, surr; 

1 ’t is my breathin’ makes the nights so long.” “ He is a 
! careful fellow this, you must know,” said the Doctor, 
cheerfully ; “ it was raining hard when they put him in 
l the open cart to bring him here, and he had the presence 
of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of his 
j pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. Probably 
’ it saved hi3 life.” The patient rattled out the skeleton 
of a laugh, and said, proud of the story, “ ’Deed, surr, an 
open cairt was a comical means o’ bringin’ a dyin’ man 
here, and a clever way to kill him.” You might have 
sworn to him for a soldier when he said it. 

One thing had perplexed me very much in going from 
bed to bed. A very significant and cruel thing. I could 
find no young man, but one. He had attracted my notice, 


116 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


by having got up and dressed himself in his soldier’s 
jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting by the 
fire ; but he had found himself too weak, and had crept 
back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of 
it. I could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young 
man aged by famine and sickness. As we were stand- 
ing by the Irish soldier’s bed, I mentioned my perplexity 
to the Doctor. He took a board with an inscription on 
it from the head of the Irishman’s bed, and asked me 
what age I supposed that man to be ? I had observed 
him with attention while talking to him, and answered, 
confidently, “ Fifty.” The doctor, with a pitying glance 
at the patient, who had dropped into a stupor again, put 
the board back, and said, “ Twenty-Four.” 

All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. 
They could not have been more humane, sympathizing, 
gentle, attentive, or wholesome. The owners of the ship, 
too, had done all they could, liberally. There were 
bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men 
were sitting round them, reading various papers and 
periodicals. I took the liberty of inviting my official 
friend Pangloss to look at those convalescent men, and 
to tell me whether their faces and bearing were or were 
not, generally, the faces and bearing of steady respectable 
soldiers? The master of the workhouse, overhearing 
me, said he had had a pretty large experience of troops, 
and that better conducted men than these, he had never 
had to do with. They were always (he added) as we 
saw them. And of us visitors (I add) they knew noth- 
ing whatever, except that we were there. 

It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with 
Pangloss. Prefacing it with the observation that, of 
course, I knew beforehand that there was not the faintest 


THE SERGEANT. 


117 


desire, anywhere, to hush up any part of this dreadful 
business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all 
possible Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss. 
Firstly, to observe that the Inquest was not held in that 
place , but at some distance off. Secondly, to look round 
upon those helpless spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to 
remember that the witnesses produced from among them 
before that Inquest, could not have been selected because 
they were the men who had the most to tell it, but be- 
cause they happened to be in a state admitting of their 
safe removal. Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and 
Jury could have come there, to those pillows, and taken 
a little evidence ? My official friend declined to commit 
himself to a reply. 

There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside 
groups. As he was a man of a very intelligent counte- 
nance, and as I have a great respect for non-commissioned 
officers as a class, I sat down on the nearest bed, to have 
some talk with him. (It was the bed of one of the 
| grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon after- 
wards.) 

“ I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the 
; Inquest, sergeant, that he never saw men behave better 
on board ship than these men.” 

“ They did behave very well, sir.” 

“ I was glad to see, too, that every man had a ham- 
mock.” 

The sergeant gravely shook his head. “ There must 
be some mistake, sir. The men of my own mess had no 
hammocks. There were not hammocks enough on board, 
and the men of the two next messes laid hold of ham- 
mocks for themselves as soon as they got on board, and 
squeezed my men out, as I may say.” 


118 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ Had the squeezed-out men none then ? ” 

“ None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used 
by other men, who wanted hammocks ; but many men 
had none at all.” 

“ Then you don’t agree with the evidence on that 
point?” 

“ Certainly not, sir. A man can’t, when he knows to 
the contrary.” 

“ Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink ? ” 

“ There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men 
were under the impression — I knew it for a fact at the 
time — that it was not allowed to take blankets or bedding 
on board, and so men who had things of that sort came 
to sell them purposely.” 

“ Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink ? ” 

“ They did, sir.” (I believe there never was a more 
truthful witness than the sergeant. He had no inclina- 
tion to make out a case.) 

“Many?” 

“Some, sir” (considering the question). “Soldier- 
like. They had been long marching in the rainy season, 
by bad roads — no roads at all, in short — and when they 
got to Calcutta, men turned to and drank, before taking 
a last look at it. Soldier-like.” 

“ Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who 
sold clothes for drink at that time ? ” 

The sergeant’s wan eye, happily just beginning to 
rekindle with health, travelled round the place and came 
back to me. “ Certainly, sir.” 

“ The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must 
have been severe ? ” 

“ It was very severe, sir.” 

“ Yet what with the rest and the sea-air, I should have 


SICK DIET. 


119 


thought that the men (even the men who got drunk) 
would have soon begun to recover on board ship ? ” 

“ So they might ; but the bad food told upon them, 
and when we got into a cold latitude, it began to tell 
more, and the men dropped.” 

“ The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am 
told, Sergeant ? ” 

“ Have you seen the food, sir ? ” 

“ Some of it.” 

“ Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir ? ” 

If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, 
had spoken the amount of this volume, he could not have 
settled that question better. I believe the sick could as 
soon have eaten the ship, as the ship’s provisions. 

I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, 
when I had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking 
Pangloss whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting 
drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefac- 
tion and vermin ; of peas becoming hardened in liquor ; 
jjffdiamraocks drinking themselves off the face of the 
earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking accom- 
modation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking 
together and going to ruin ? “ If not (I asked him), 

what did he say in defence of the officers condemned by 
the Coroner’s Jury, who, by signing the General Inspec- 
tion report relative to the ship Great Tasmania chartered 
for these troops, had deliberately asserted all that bad and 
poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome 
food ? My official friend replied that it was a remark- 
able fact, that whereas some officers were only positively 
good, and other officers only comparatively better, those 
particular officers were superlatively the very best of all 
possible officers. 


120 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record 
of this journey. The spectacle of the soldiers in the 
hospital-beds of that Liverpool workhouse (a very good 
workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so shocking 
and so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to re- 
member it. It would have been simply unbearable at 
the time, but for the consideration and pity with which 
they were soothed in their sufferings. 

No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is 
worthy of the name when set against the guilt of this 
transaction. But, if the memory of it die out unavenged, 
and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal and 
disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape 
will be infamous to the Government (no matter of what 
party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the 
nation that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to 
be done in its name. 


BOANERGES BOILER. 


121 


IX. 


CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. 

If the confession that I have often travelled from this 
Covent-Garden lodging of mine on Sundays, should give 
offence to those who never travel on Sundays, they will 
be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the journeys in 
question were made to churches. 

Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preach- 
ers. Time Tvas, when I was dragged by the hair of my 
head, as one may say, to hear too many. On summer 
evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might 
have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my 
day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the 
crown, have been violently scrubbed from the neck to 
the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and 
have then been carried off highly charged with sapo- 
naceous electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the 
unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler 
and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was 
quite steamed out of me. In which pitiable plight I 
have been haled out of the place of meeting, at the con- 
clusion of the exercises, and catechised respecting Boan- 
erges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his seventhly, 
until I have regarded that reverend person in the light 
of a most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time was, 
when I was carried off to platform assemblages at which 
no human child, whether of wrath or grace, could pos- 


122 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


sibly keep its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep 
stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually heard 
the orator in possession, spinning and humming like a 
great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, 
and I discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as 
to that last stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under 
Boanerges when he has specifically addressed himself to 
us — us, the infants — and at this present writing I 
hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us, 
though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold 
his big round face, and I look up the inside of his out- 
stretched coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the 
stopper on, and I hate him with an unwholesome hatred 
for two hours. Through such means did it come to pass 
that I knew the powerful preacher from beginning to end, 
all over and all through, while I w r as very young, and 
that I left him behind at an early period of life. Peace 
be with him ! More peace than he brought to me ! 

Now, I have heard many preachers since that time — 
not powerful ; merely Christian, unaffected, and rever- 
ential — and I have had many such preachers on my 
roll of friends. But, it was not to hear these, any more 
than the powerful class, that I made my Sunday jour- 
neys. They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous 
churches in the City of London. It came into my head 
one day, here had I been cultivating a familiarity with 
all the churches of Pome, and I knew nothing of the 
insides of the old churches of London ! This befell on 
a Sunday morning. I began my expeditions that very 
same day, and they lasted me a year. 

I never wanted to know the names of the churches to 
which I went, and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant 
in that particular of at least nine-tenths of them. In- 


A CLOUD OF CHURCHES. 


123 


deed, saving that I know the church of old Gower’s 
tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his books) to 
be the church of Saint Saviour’s, Southwark ; and the 
church of Milton’s tomb to be the church of Cripple- 
gate ; and the church on Cornhill with the great golden 
keys to be the church of Saint Peter ; I doubt if I could 
pass a competitive examination in any of the names. 
No question did I ever ask of living creature concerning 
these churches, and no answer to any antiquarian ques- 
! tion on the subject that I ever put to books, shall harass 
the reader’s soul. A full half of my pleasure in them 
arose out of their mystery ; mysterious I found them ; 
mysterious they shall remain for me. 

Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgot- 
ten old churches in the City of London ? 

It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday 
morning, when I stroll down one of the many narrow 
hilly streets in the City that tend due south to the 
Thames. It is my first experiment, and I have come to 
the region of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have 
| put down a fierce-eyed spare old woman, whose slate- 
colored gown smells of herbs, and who walked up Al- 
dersgate Street to some chapel where she comforts her- 
self with brimstone doctrine, I warrant. We have also 
| put down a stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty 
large prayer-book in an unfolded pocket-handkerchief, 
who got out at a corner of a court near Stationers’ Hall, 
and who I think must go to church there, because she 
! is the widow of some deceased Old Company’s Beadle. 

; The rest of our freight were mere chance pleasure-seek- 
I ers and rural walkers, and went on to the Blackwall rail- 
i way. So many bells are ringing, when I stand undecided 
at a street-corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical 


124 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


fold might be a bell-wether. The discordance is fearful 
My state of indecision is referable to, and about equally 
divisible among, four great churches, which are all within 
sight and sound, all within the space of a few square 
yards. As I stand at the street-corner, I don’t see as 
many as four people at once going to church, though I see 
as many as four churches with their steeples clamoring 
for people. I choose my church, and go up the flight of 
steps to the great entrance in the tower. A mouldy 
tower within, and like a neglected wash-house. A rope 
comes through the beamed roof, and a man in the corner 
pulls it and clashes the bell — a whity-brown man, whose 
clothes were once black — a man with flue on him, and 
cobweb. He stares at me, wondering how I come there, 
and I stare at him, wondering how he comes there. 
Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim 
church. About twenty people are discernible, waiting 
to begin. Christening would seem to have faded out of 
this church long ago, for the font has the dust of desue- 
tude thick upon it, and its wooden cover (shaped like an 
old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it would n’t come 
off upon requirement. I perceive the altar to be rick- 
ety, and the Commandments damp. Entering after this 
survey, I jostle the clergyman in his canonicals, who is 
entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of state with 
curtains, where nobody sits. The pew is ornamented 
with four blue ‘wands, once carried by four somebodys, 
I suppose, before somebody else, but which there is no- 
body now to hold or receive honor from. I open the 
door of a family-pew, and shut myself in ; if I could 
occupy twenty family-pews at once, I might have them. 
The clerk, a brisk young man (how does he come here ?), 
glances at me knowingly, as who should say, u You have 


THE DOWGATE FAMILY. 


125 


done it now ; you must stop.” Organ plays. Organ-loft 
is in a small gallery across the church ; gallery congre- 
gation, two girls. I wonder within myself what will 
happen when we are required to sing. 

There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, 
and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in 
such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working 
of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which 
are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They be- 
| longed in 1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were 
they ? Jane Comport must have married Young Dow- 
i gate, and come into the family that way ; Young Dow- 
gate was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her 
prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly- 
leaf ; if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she 
die and leave the book here ? Perhaps at the rickety 
altar, and before the damp Commandments, she, Com- 
i port, had taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful 
hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the 
i long run as great a success as was expected ? 

The opening of the service recalls my wandering 
thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment, that I have 
been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible 
snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I 
wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes ; the cler- 
' gyman winks ; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs 
! (and probably winks) ; all our little party wink, sneeze, 
and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay 
i of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something 
J else. Is the something else, the decay of dead citizens 
in the vaults below ? As sure as Death it is ! Not only 
in the cold damp February day, do we cough and sneeze 
dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens 


126 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


have got into the very bellows of the organ, and half 
choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, 
and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens 
stick upon the walls, and lie pulverized on the sounding- 
board over the clergyman’s head, and, when a gust of air 
comes, tumble down upon him. 

In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much 
snuff, made of the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, 
and other families and branches, that I gave but little 
heed to our dull manner of ambling through the service ; 
to the brisk clerk’s manner of encouraging us to try a 
note or two at psalm time ; to the gallery-congregation’s 
manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of 
time or tune ; to the whity-brown man’s manner of 
shutting the minister into the pulpit, and being very par- 
ticular with the lock of the door, as if lie were a danger- 
ous animal. But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon 
accustomed myself to the dead citizens when I found 
that I could not possibly get on without them among the 
City churches. 

Another Sunday. 

After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like 
a leg of mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I 
make selection of a church oddly put away in a corner 
among a number of lanes — a smaller church than the 
last, and an ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne. 
As a congregation, we are fourteen strong : not count- 
ing an exhausted charity-school in a gallery, which 
has dwindled away to four boys, and two girls. In 
the porch, is a benefaction of loaves of bread, which 
there would seem to be nobody left in the exhausted 
congregation, to claim, and which I saw an exhausted 
beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his eyes 


BOYS AT CHURCH. 


127 


for self and family when I passed in. There is also an 
exhausted clerk in a brown wig, and two or three ex- 
hausted doors and windows have been bricked up, and 
the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions are 
threadbare, and the whole of the church furniture is in 
a very advanced stage of exhaustion. We are three old 
women (habitual), two young lovers (accidental), two 
tradesmen, one with a wife and One alone, an aunt and 
nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for 
church with everything about them limp that should be 
stiff, and vice versa , are an invariable experience), and 
three sniggering boys. The clergyman is, perhaps, the 
chaplain of a civic company ; he has the moist and vinous 
look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with 
9 Twenty port, and comet vintages. 

We are so quiet in our dulness that the three snigger- 
ing boys, who have got away into a corner by the altar- 
railing, give us a start, like crackers, whenever they 
laugh. And this reminds me of my own village-church 
where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the 
birds are very musical indeed, farmers’ boys patter out 
over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from 
his desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the sum- 
mer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, 
and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, 
making believe that nothing of the sort has happened. 
The aunt and nephew in this City church are much dis- 
turbed by the sniggering boys. The nephew is himself a 
boy, and the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts of 
marbles and string, by secretly offering such commodities 
to his distant contemplation. This young Saint Anthony 
for a while resists, but presently becomes a backslider, 
and in dumb show defies the sniggerers to “ heave ” a 


128 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


marble or two in his direction. Herein he is detected 
by the aunt (a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who has 
the charge of offices), and I perceive that worthy relative 
to poke him in the side, with the corrugated hooked 
handle of an ancient umbrella. The nephew revenges 
himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his 
kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up 
his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, 
he swells and becomes discolored, and yet again swells 
and becomes discolored, until the aunt can bear it no 
longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with 
his eyes going before him like a prawn’s. This causes 
the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible move, and I 
know which of them will go out first, because of the 
over-devout attention that he suddenly concentrates on 
the clergyman. In a little while, this hypocrite, with 
an elaborate demonstration of hushing his footsteps, and 
with a face generally expressive of having until now for- 
gotten a religious appointment elsewffiere, is gone. Num- 
ber two gets out in the same way, but rather quicker. 
Number three getting safely to the door, there turns 
reckless, and banging it open, flies forth with a Whoop ! 
that vibrates to the top of the tower above us. 

The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and 
a muffled voice, may be scant of hearing as well as of 
breath, but he only glances up, as having an idea that 
somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and continues 
his steady jog-trot, like a farmer’s wife going to market. 
He does all he has to do, in the same easy way, and 
gives us a concise sermon, still like the jog-trot of the 
farmer’s wife on a level road. Its drowsy cadence soon 
lulls the three old women asleep, and the unmarried 
tradesman sits looking out at window, and the married 


WHITY-BROWN. 


129 


tradesman sits looking at his wife’s bonnet, and the lov- 
ers sit looking at one another, so superlatively happy, 
that I mind when I, turned of eighteen, went with my 
Angelica to a City church on account of a shower (by 
this special coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane), and 
when I said to my Angelica, “ Let the blessed event, 
Angelica, occur at no altar but this ! ” and when my 
Angelica consented that it should occur at no other — 
which it certainly never did, for it never occurred any- 
where. And 0, Angelica, what has become of you, this 
present Sunday morning when I can’t attend to the ser- 
mon ; and, more difficult question than that, what has 
become of Me as I was when I sat by your side ! 

But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive 
which surely is a little conventional — like the strange 
rustlings and settlings and clearings of throats and noses, 
which are never dispensed with, at certain points of the 
Church service, and are never held to be necessary 
under any other circumstances. In a minute more it is 
all over, and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of 
it as it can be of anything in its rheumatic state, and in 
another minute we are all of us out of the church, and 
Whity-brown has locked it up. Another minute or little 
more, and, in the neighboring churchyard — not the 
yard of that church, but of another — a churchyard like 
a great shabby old mignionette-box, with two trees in it 
and one tomb — I meet Whity-brown, in his private 
capacity, fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from the 
public-house in the corner, where the keys of the rot- 
ting fire-ladders are kept and were never asked for, and 
where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out-at-elbowed 
bagatelle -board on the first floor. 

In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found 


130 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


an individual who might have been claimed as expressly 
a City personage. I remember the church, by the feat- 
ure that the clergyman could n’t get to his own desk 
without going through the clerk’s, or could n’t get to the 
pulpit without going through the reading-desk — I forget 
which, and it is no matter — and by the presence of 
this personage among the exceedingly sparse congrega- 
tion. I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no ex- 
hausted charity-school to help us out. The personage 
was dressed in black of square cut, and was stricken in 
years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes. He 
was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied aspect. In his 
hand, he conducted to church a mysterious child : a child 
of the feminine gender. The child had a beaver hat, 
with a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to 
any bird of the air. The child was further attired in a 
nankeen frock and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a 
veil. It had a blemish, in the nature of currant-jelly, 
on its chin ; and was a thirsty child. Insomuch that 
the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, from 
which, when the first psalm was given out, the child was 
operdy refreshed. At all other times throughout the ser- 
vice it was motionless, and stood on the seat of the large 
pew, closely fitted into the corner, like a rain-water pipe. 

The personage never opened his book, and never looked 
at the clergyman. He never sat down either, but stood 
with his arms leaning on the top of the pew, and liis 
forehead sometimes shaded with his right hand, always 
looking at the church door. It was a long church for 
a church of its size, and he was at the upper end, but 
he always looked at the door. That he was an old book- 
keeper, or an old trader who had kept his own books, and 
that he might be seen at the Bank of England about Divi- 


THE PERSONAGE AND CHILD. 


131 


dend times, no doubt. That lie had lived in the City all 
his life and was disdainful of other localities, no doubt. 
Why he looked at the door, I never absolutely proved, 
but it is my belief that he lived in expectation of the 
time when the citizens would come back to live in the 
City, and its ancient glories would be renewed. He ap- 
peared to expect that this would occur on a Sunday, and 
that the wanderers would first appear, in the deserted 
churches, penitent and humbled. Hence, he looked at 
the door which they never darkened. Whose child the 
child was, whether the child of a disinherited daugh- 
ter, or some parish orphan whom the personage had 
adopted, there was nothing to lead up to. It never 
played, or skipped, or smiled. Once, the idea occurred 
to me that it was an automaton, and that the personage 
had made it ; but following the strange couple out one 
Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, “ Thirteen 
thousand pounds ; ” to which it added in a weak human 
voice, “ Seventeen and fourpence.” Four Sundays, I 
followed them out, and this is all I ever heard or saw 
them say. One Sunday, I followed them home. They 
lived behind a pump, and the personage opened their 
abode with an exceeding large key. The one solitary 
inscription on their house related to a fire-plug. The 
house was partly undermined by a deserted and closed 
gateway ; its windows were blind with dirt ; and it stood 
with its face disconsolately turned to a wall. Five great 
churches and two small ones rang their Sunday bells 
between this house and the church the couple frequented, 
so they must have had some special reason for going a 
quarter of a mile to it. The last time I saw them, was 
on this wise. I had been to explore another church at 
a distance, and happened to pass the church they fre* 


132 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


quented, at about two of the afternoon when that edifice 
was closed. But, a little side-door, which I had never 
observed before, stood open, and disclosed certain cellar- 
ous steps. Methought, “ They are airing the vaults to- 
day,” when the personage and the child silently arrived 
at the steps, and silently descended. Of course, T came 
to the conclusion that the personage had at last despaired 
of the looked-for return of the penitent citizens, and that 
he and the child went down to get themselves buried. 

In the course of my pilgrimages I-came upon one ob- 
scure church which had broken out in the melodramatic 
style, and was got up with various tawdry decorations, 
much after the manner of the extinct London maypoles. 
These attractions had induced several young priests or 
deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young 
ladies interested in that holy order (the proportion being) 
as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a deacon), to 
come into the City as a new and odd excitement. It 
was wonderful to see how these young people played 
out their little play in the heart of the City, all among 
themselves, without the deserted City’s knowing anything 
about it. It was as if you should take an empty counting- 
house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries 
there. They had impressed a small school (from what 
neighborhood I don’t know) to assist in the performances, 
and it was pleasant to notice frantic garlands of inscrip- 
tion on the walls, especially addressing those poor inno- 
cents in characters impossible for them to decipher. 
There was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum 
in this congregation. 

But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens 
formed the uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a 
dreamy way not at all displeasing, was the staple char- 


CHURCH-SCENTS. — RETROSPECT. 


135 


acter of the neighborhood. In the churches about Mark 
Lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat ; and 
I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of 
an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to 
Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was often a subtle 
flavor of wine : sometimes, of tea. One church near 
Mincing Lane smelt like a druggist’s drawer. Behind 
the Monument, the service had a flavor of damaged 
oranges, which, a little further down towards the river, 
tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cos- 
mopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact coun- 
terpart of the church in the Rake’s Progress w r here the 
hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was 
no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook a 
perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent ware- 
house. 

Be the scent what it would, however, there was no 
speciality in the people. There were never enough of 
them to represent any calling or neighborhood. They 
had all gone elsewhere over-night, and the few stragglers 
in the many churches languished there inexpressively. 

Among the uncommercial travels in which I have en- 
gaged, this year of Sunday-travel occupies its own place, 
apart from all the rest. Whether I think of the church 
where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river almost 
flapped against the windows, or of the church where the 
railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above 
the roof, I recall a curious experience. On summer Sun- 
; days, in the gentle rain or the bright sunshine — either, 
deepening the idleness of the idle City — I have sat, in 
* that singular silence which belongs to resting-places 
; usually astir, in scores of buildings at the heart of the 
world’s metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of 


134 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


people speaking the English tongue, than the ancient 
edifices of the Eternal City or the Pyramids of Egypt. 
The dark vestries and registries into which I have 
peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have 
echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory 
as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way received. 
In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, 
there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some 
teqrs flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and 
dry ! and the old tree at the window with no room for 
its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb 
of the old Master of the old Company, on which it drips. 
His son restored it and died, his daughter restored it and 
died, and then he had been remembered long enough, and 
the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked 
out. 

There are few more striking indications of the changes 
of manners and customs that two or three hundred years 
have brought about, than these deserted Churches. 
Many of them are handsome and costly structures, sev- 
eral of them were designed by Wren, many of them 
arose from the ashes of the great fire, others of them out- 
lived the plague and the fire too, to die a slow death in 
these later days. No one can be sure of the coming time ; 
but it is not too much to say of it that it has no sign in 
its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these churches of 
their congregations and uses. They remain like the j 
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them and 
around them, Monuments of another age. They are ' 
worth a S unday-exploration now and then, for they yet 
echo, not unharmoniously, to the time when the city of 
London really was London ; when the ’Prentices and 
Trained Bands were of mark in the state ; when even 


RETROSPECT. 


135 


the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality — not a Fic- 
tion conventionally be-puffed on one day in the year by 
illustrious friends, who no less conventionally laugh 
at him on the remaining three hundred and sixty-four 
days. 


136 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


X. 


SHY NEIGHBORHOODS. 

So much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I 
cherished betting propensities, I should probably be found 
registered in sporting newspapers, under some such title 
as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven-stone man- 
kind to competition in walking. My last special feat was 
turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian 
and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country 
to breakfast. The road was so lonely in the night, that 
I fell asleep to the monotonous sound of my own feet, 
doing their regular four miles an hour. Mile after mile 
I walked, without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing 
heavily and dreaming constantly. It was only wffien I 
made a stumble like a drunken man, or struck out into 
the road to avoid a horseman close upon me on the path 
— who had no existence — that I came to myself and 
looked about. The day broke mistily (it was autumn 
time), and I could not disembarrass myself of the idea 
that I had to climb those heights and banks of cloud, and 
that there was an Alpine Convent somewhere behind the 
sun, where I was going to breakfast. This sleepy notion 
was so much stronger than such substantial objects as 
villages and haystacks, that, after the sun was up and 
bright, and when I was sufficiently awake to have a sensp 
of pleasure in the prospect, I still occasionally caught 
myself looking about for wooden arms to point the right 


PEDES TRLANTSM. 


137 


track up the mountain, and wondering there was no snow 
yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep, that I made im- 
mense quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of 
course I never make any when I am in my right senses), 
and that I spoke a certain language once pretty familiar 
to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, 
with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such 
frequent experience in the state between sleeping and 
waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know 
I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so 
ready. The readiness is not imaginary, because I often 
recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the 
fluent speech, after I am broad awake. 

My walking is of two kinds : one, straight on end to a 
definite goal at a round pace ; one, objectless, loitering, 
and purely vagabond. In the latter state, no gypsy on 
earth is a greater vagabond than myself ; it is so natural 
to me and strong with me, that I think I must be the 
descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable 
tramp. 

One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, 
in a vagabond course of shy metropolitan neighborhoods 
and small shops, is the fancy of a humble artist as exem- 
plified in two portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, 
of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United 
States of America. These illustrious men are highly 
colored, in fighting trim, and fighting attitude. To sug- 
gest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful 
calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, 
with primroses and other modest flowers springing up 
under the heels of his half-boots ; while Mr. Sayers is 
impelled to the administration of his favorite blow, the 
Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a village-church. 


138 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


The humble homes of England, with their domestic vir- 
tues and honeysuckle-porches, urge both heroes to go in 
and win ; and the lark and other singing-birds are ob- 
servable in the upper air, ecstatically carolling their 
thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the whole, the associa- 
tions entwined with the pugilistic art by this artist are 
much in the manner of Izaak Walton. 

But, it is wdth the lower animals of back streets and 
by-ways that my present purpose rests. For human 
notes we may return to such neighborhoods when leisure 
and opportunity serve. 

Nothing in shy neighborhoods perplexes my mind 
more, than the bad company birds keep. Foreign birds 
often get into good society, but British birds are insep- 
arable from low associates. There is a whole street of 
them in Saint Giles’s ; and I always find them in poor 
and immoral neighborhoods, convenient to the public- 
house and the pawnbroker’s. They seem to lead people 
into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages 
usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is 
this ? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted 
velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waist- 
coats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by 
the respectable orders of society to undertake. In a dirty 
court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing 
his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were 
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird- 
shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against 
old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen-stuff. Surely 
a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch ! I bought 
that goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung 
upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a 
counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be 


BIRDS AND BAD COMPANY. — DONKEYS. 139 


a dyer’s ; otherwise it would have been impossible to 
account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. 
From the time of his appearance in my room, either he 
left off being thirsty — which was not in the bond — or 
he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket 
drop back into his well when he let it go : a shock which 
in the best of times had made him tremble. He drew no 
water but by stealth and under the cloak of night. After 
an interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation, 
the merchant who had educated him was. appealed to. 
The merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat 
and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry. He 
wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, 
velveteeny. He sent word that he would “ look round.” 
He looked round, appeared in the doorway of the room, 
and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch. In- 
stantly a raging thirst beset that bird ; when it was 
appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of 
water ; and finally, leaped about his perch and sharp- 
ened his bill, as if he had been to the nearest wine-vaults 
and got drunk. 

Donkeys again. I know shy neighborhoods where 
the Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to 
live up-stairs, for I have examined the back-yard from 
over the palings, and have been unable to make him out. 
Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey 
in vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed 
him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince 
and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust 
his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest 
slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of 
him. Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck 
with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from White- 


140 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


chapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no particular 
private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a 
state of nature ; but in the shy neighborhood state, you 
shall see them always in the same hands, and always de- 
veloping their very best energies for the very worst com- 
pany. I have known a donkey — by sight ; we were 
not on speaking terms — who lived over on the Surrey 
side of London Bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob’s 
Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that animal, 
when his services were not in immediate requisition, to 
go out alone, idling. I have met him, a mile from his 
place of residence, loitering about the streets ; and the 
expression of his countenance at such times was most 
degraded. He was attached to the establishment of an 
elderly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand 
on Saturday nights with a cartful of those delicacies out- 
side a gin-shop, pricking up his ears when a customer 
came to the cart, and too evidently deriving satisfaction 
from the knowledge that they got bad measure. His 
mistress was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The 
last time I ever saw him (about five years ago) he 
was in circumstances of difficulty, caused by this failing. 
Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and 
forgotten, he went off idling. He prowled among his 
usual low haunts for some time, gratifying his depraved 
tastes, until, not taking the cart into his calculations, he 
endeavored to turn up a narrow alley, and became 
greatly involved. He was taken into custody by the 
police, and, the Green Yard of the district being near at 
hand, was backed into that place of durance. At that 
crisis, I encountered him ; the stubborn sense he evinced 
of being — not to compromise the expression — a black- 
guard, I never saw exceeded in the human subject. A 


A DRAMATIC DOG. 


141 


flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his 
periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness 
broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his 
mouth and shaking his hanging head, a picture of dis- 
grace and obduracy. I have seen boys being taken 
to station-houses, who were as like him as his own 
brother. 

The dogs of shy neighborhoods, I observe to avoid 
play, and to be conscious of poverty. They avoid work 
too, if they can, of course ; that is in the nature of all 
animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a- back 
street in the neighborhood of Walworth, who has great- 
ly distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who 
takes his portrait with him when he makes an engage- 
ment, for the illustration of the play-bill. His portrait 
(which is not at all like him) represents him in the act 
of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is sup- 
posed to have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a 
British officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is 
no such Indian in the piece, and no such incident. He 
is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I 
would be bail to any amount ; but whose intellectual 
qualities in association with dramatic fiction, I cannot 
rate high. Indeed, he is too honest for the profession he 
has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire last sum- 
mer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I at- 
tended the performance. His first scene was eminently 
successful ; but, as it occupied a second in its represen- 
tation (and five lines in the bill), it scarcely afforded 
ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his powers. 
He had merely to bark, run on and jump through an inn- 
window after a comic fugitive. The next scene of im- 
portance to the fable was a little marred in its interest 


142 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


by his over-anxiety : forasmuch as while his master (a 
belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous 
night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful 
dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty 
leagues away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in 
the prompter’s box, and clearly choking himself against 
his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of all, that 
his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a 
dense and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, 
and there to fly at the murderer when he found him 
resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound ready 
for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into 
the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in 
the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the 
least excited ; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue 
out ; and there sat down, panting, and amiably surveying 
the audience, with his tail beating on the boards, like a 
Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murderer, impatient to 
receive his doom, was audibly calling to him “ Co-o-ome 
here ! ” while the victim, struggling with his bonds, as- 
sailed him with the most injurious expressions. It hap- 
pened through these means, that when he was in course 
of time persuaded to trot up and rend the murderer limb 
from limb, he made it (for dramatic purposes) a little too 
obvious that he worked out that awful retribution by 
licking butter off his blood-stained hands. 

In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs 
live, who perform in Punch’s shows. I may venture to 
say that I am on terms of intimacy with both, and that 
I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to 
look down at the man inside the show, during the whole 
performance. The difficulty other dogs have in satisfy- 
ing their minds about these dogs, appears to be never 


A COUNTRY DOG. 


143 


overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter 
them over and over again, as they trudge along in their 
off-minutes behind the legs of the show and beside the 
drum ; but all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jack- 
ets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those articles 
of personal adornment, an eruption — a something in 
the nature of mange, perhaps. From this Covent- 
Garden window of mine I noticed a country dog, only 
the other day, who had come up to Covent- Garden Mar- 
ket under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of 
which he still trailed along with him. He loitered 
about the corners of the four streets commanded by my 
window ; and bad London dogs came up, and told him 
lies that he didn’t believe ; and worse London dogs 
came up, and made proposals to him to go and steal in 
the market, which his principles rejected ; and the ways 
of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay 
down in a doorway. He had scarcely got a wink of 
sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. He was dart- 
ing to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw 
the frill, and Stopped in the middle of the street, appalled. 
The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, 
the audience formed, the drum and pipes struck up. My 
country dog remained immovable, intently staring at 
these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama 
by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered Punch, 
who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby’s mouth. At this spec- 
tacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave one terri- 
ble howl, and fled due west. 

We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk 
more expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull- 
dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. 
He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public- 


144 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean 
against posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect 
work for him, and keeps him under rigid coercion. I 
once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman — a 
gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too. 
The dog kept the gentleman entirely for his glorification, 
and the gentleman never talked about anything but the 
terrier. This, however, was not in a shy neighborhood, 
and is a digression consequently. 

There are a great many dogs in shy neighborhoods, 
who keep boys. I have my eye on a mongrel in Somers- 
town who keeps three boys. He feigns that he can bring 
down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can do neither), 
and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all 
sorts of suburban fields. He has likewise made them 
believe that he possesses some mysterious knowledge of 
the art of fishing, and they consider themselves incom- 
pletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle- 
jar and a wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them 
and barking tremendously. There is a dog residing in 
the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind man. He 
may be seen, most days, in Oxford Street, haling the 
blind man away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated 
by, and unintelligible to, the man : wholly of the dog’s 
conception and execution. Contrariwise, when the man 
has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thorough- 
fare and meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing the 
money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to 
the public, taking the man against his will, on the invi- 
tation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at 
Harrow — he was so intent on that direction. The north 
wall of Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade 
and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointments among 


DOGS WHO KEEP MEN. 


145 


blind men at about two or three o’clock in the afternoon. 
They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there, 
and compare notes. Their dogs may always be observed 
at the same time, openly disparaging the men they keep, 
to one another, and settling where they shall respectively 
take their men when they begin to move again. At a 
small butcher’s, in a shy neighborhood (there is no rea-' 
son for suppressing the name ; it is by Notting-hill, and 
gives upon the district called the Potteries), I know a 
shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover. He is 
a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows 
this drover to get drunk. On these occasions, it is the 
dog’s custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping his 
eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have seen him with 
six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he 
began with when he left the market, and at what places 
, he has left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not 
i being able to account to himself for certain particular 
sheep. A light has gradually broken on him, he has re- 
I membered at what butcher’s he left them, and in a burst 
of grave satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and 
} shown himself much relieved. If I could at any time 
have doubted the fact that it was he who kept the drover, 

: and not the drover who kept him, it would have been 
i abundantly proved by his way of taking undivided charge 
I of the six sheep, when the drover came out besmeared 
! with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong directions, 
j which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep 
entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with 
! respectful firmness, “ That instruction would place them 
under an omnibus ; you had better confine your attention 
to yourself — you will want it all ; ” and has driven his 
charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a 
10 


14G THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man 
very, very far behind. 

As the dogs of shy neighborhoods usually betray a 
slinking consciousness of being in poor circumstances — 
for the most part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an 
awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving that some- 
body is going to harness them to something, to pick up 
a living — so the cats of shy neighborhoods exhibit 
a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only 
are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the 
surplus population around them, and on the densely 
crowded state of all the avenues to cat’s meat ; not only 
is there a moral and politico-economical haggardness in 
them, traceable to these reflections ; but they evince a 
physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is 
wretchedly got up ; their black turns rusty, like old 
mourning ; they wear very indifferent fur ; and take to 
the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am 
on terms of recognition with several small streets of cats, 
about the Obelisk in Saint George’s Fields, and also in 
the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and also in the back 
settlements of Drury Lane. In appearance, they are 
very like the women among whom they live. They 
seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the 
street, without any preparation. They leave their 
young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, 
while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and 
spit, at street corners. In particular, I remark that 
when they are about to increase their families (an event 
of frequent recurrence), the resemblance is strongly ex- 
pressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self- 
neglect, and general giving up of things. I cannot hon- 
estly report that I have ever seen a feline matron of 


STREET FOWLS. 


147 


this class washing her face when in an interesting con- 
dition. 

Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel 
among the lower animals of shy neighborhoods, by dwell- 
ing at length upon the exasperated moodiness of the 
tom-cats, and their resemblance in many respects to a 
man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on 
the fowls of the same localities. 

That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, 
should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly 
down a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is 
a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more 
in this connection to wonder at. Otherwise I might 
wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have 
become separated from all the birds of the air — have 
taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud — have 
forgotten all about live trees, and make roosting-places 
of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and 
door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, 
and take them as they are. I accept as products of 
Nature and things of course, a reduced Bantam family 
of my acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are in- 
cessantly at the pawnbroker’s. I cannot say that they 
enjoy themselves, for they are of a melancholy temper- 
ament ; but what enjoyment they are capable of, they 
derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker’s side- 
entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble 
flutter, as if they were newly come down in the world, 
and were afraid of being identified. I know a low 
fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who 
takes his whole establishment of wives, in single file, in 
at the door of the Jug Department of a disorderly tav- 
ern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the 


148 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


company’s legs, emerges with them at the Bottle En- 
trance, and so passes his life : seldom, in the season, 
going to bed before two in the morning. Over Water- 
loo Bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they 
belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, 
and towel-horse-making trade), who are always trying to 
get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the old lady, 
under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, has 
an idea of intrusting an egg to that particular denomi- 
nation, or merely understands that she has no business in 
the building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I 
cannot determine ; but she is constantly endeavoring to 
undermine the principal door : while her partner, who is 
infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging 
her and defying the Universe. But, the family I have 
been best acquainted wdth, since the removal from this 
trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in 
the densest part of Bethnal-green. Their abstraction 
from the objects among which they live, or rather their 
conviction that those objects have all come into existence 
in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me, 
that I have made them the subject of many journeys at 
divers hours. After careful observation of the two lords 
and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have 
come to the conclusion that their opinions are repre- 
sented by the leading lord and leading lady : the latter, 
as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity 
of feather and visibility of quill, that gives her the ap- 
pearance of a bundle of office-pens. When a railway 
goods-van that would crush an elephant comes round the 
corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed 
from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole 
rush was a passing property in the air, which may have 


BETHNAL-GREEH BREED OF POULTRY. 149 


left something to eat behind it. They look upon old 
shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and fragments 
of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for fowls to 
peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as 
a sort of hail ; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew. Gaslight 
comes quite as natural to them as any other light ; and 
I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the 
two lords, the early public-house at the corner has super- 
seded the sun. I have established it as a certain fact, 
that they always begin to crow when the public-house 
shutters begin to be taken down, and that they salute the 
potboy, the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if 
he were Phoebus in person. 


150 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XI. 


TRAMPS. 

The chance use of the word (t Tramp ” in my last 
paper, brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before 
my mind’s eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen 
than a compulsion was upon me to take it up again, and 
make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the 
summer roads in all directions. 

Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, 
he sits with his legs in a dry ditch ; and whenever he 
goes to sleep (which is very often indeed), he goes to 
sleep on his back. Yonder, by the high-road, glaring 
white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf 
under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the 
highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. He 
lies on the broad of his back, with his face turned up to 
the sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown across 
his face. His bundle (what can be the contents of that 
mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry 
it about ?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking 
woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her 
back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched 
on the front of her head, to shade her face from the sun 
in walking, and she ties her skirts round her in conven- 
tionally tight tramp-fashion with a sort of apron. You 
can seldom catch sight of her, resting thus, without seeing 


SURLY AND SLINKING TRAMP. 


151 


her in a despondently defiant manner doing something to 
her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between her 
fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the 
daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the 
man. And his slumberous propensities would not seem 
to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for 
she carries it much oftener and further than he. When 
they are afoot, you will mostly find him slouching on 
ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily behind 
with the burden. He is given to personally correcting 
her, too — which phase of his character develops itself 
oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors — and she 
appears to become strongly attached to him for these 
reasons ; it may usually be noticed that when the poor 
creature has a bruised face, she is the most affectionate. 
He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and 
has no object whatever in going anywhere. He will 
sometimes call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but 
only when he takes an imaginative flight. He generally 
represents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a 
job of work ; but he never did work, he never does, and 
he never, never will. It is a favorite fiction with him, 
however (as if he were the most industrious character on 
earth), that you never work ; and as he goes past your 
garden and sees you looking at your flowers, you will 
overhear him growl, with a strong sense of contrast, 
“ You are a lucky hidle devil, you are ! ” 

The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and 
has the same injured conviction on him that you were 
born to whatever you possess, and never did anything to 
get it ; but he is of a less audacious disposition. He will 
stop before your gate, and say to his female companion 
with an air of constitutional humility and propitiation — 


152 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a 
blind or a bush — “ This is a sweet spot, ain’t it ? A 
lovelly spot ! And I wonder if they’d give two poor foot- 
sore travellers like me and you, a drop of fresh water out 
of such a pretty gen-teel crib ? We ’d take it wery koind 
on ’em, wouldn’t us ? Wery koind, upon my word, us 
would ! ” He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity, 
and will extend his modestly injured propitiation to the 
dog chained up in your yard : remarking, as he slinks at 
the yard-gate, “ Ah ! You are a foine breed o’ dog, too, 
and you ain’t kep for notliink ! I ’d take it wery koind 
o’ your master if he ’d ’elp a traveller and his woife as 
envies no gentlefolk their good fortun’, wi’ a bit o’ your 
broken wittles. He ’d never know the want of it, nor 
more would you. Don’t bark like that, at poor persons 
as never done you no ’arm ; the poor is down-trodden 
and broke enough without that; O don’t!” He gen- 
erally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and al- 
ways looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the 
road and down the road, before going on. 

Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust hab- 
it ; let the hard-working laborer at whose cottage-door 
they prowl and beg, have the ague never so badly, these 
tramps are sure to be in good health. 

There is another kind of tramp, wdiom you encounter 
this bright summer day — say, on a road with the sea- 
breeze making its dust lively, and sails of ships in the 
blue distance beyond the slope of Down. As you walk 
enjoy ingly on, you descry in the perspective at the bot- 
tom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that 
appears to be sitting airily on a -gate, whistling in a 
cheerful and disengaged manner. As you approach 
nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down from 


WELL-SPOKEN YOUNG-MAN TRAMP. 


153 


the gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to 
become tender of foot, to depress its head and elevate its 
shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of pro- 
found despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill 
and coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the 
figure of a shabby young man. He is moving painfully 
forward, in the direction in which you are going, and his 
mind is so preoccupied with his misfortunes that he is 
not aware of your approach until you are close upon 
him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you, you 
discover him to be a remarkable well-behaved young 
man, and a remarkably well-spoken young man. You 
know him to be well-behaved, by his respectful manner 
of touching his hat ; you know him to be well-spoken, 
by his smooth manner of expressing himself. He says 
in a flowing confidential voice, and without punctuation, 
“ I ask your pardon sir but if you would excuse the lib- 
erty of being so addressed upon the public Iw r ay by one 
who is almost reduced to rags though it as not always 
been so and by no fault of his own but through ill elth 
in his family and many unmerited sufferings it would 
be a great obligation sir to know the time.” You give 
the well-spoken young man, the time. The well-spoken 
young man, keeping well up with you, resumes : “ I am 
aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further question 
on a gentleman walking for his entertainment but might 
I make so bold as ask the favor of the way to Dover 
sir and about the distance?” You inform the well- 
spoken young man that the way to Dover is straight on, 
and the distance some eighteen miles. The well-spoken 
young man becomes greatly agitated. “ In the condition 
to which I am reduced,” says he, “ I could not ope to 
reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in a 


154 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old 
out over the flinty road and were not on the hare ground 
of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy himself 
by looking Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to 
you ? ” As the well-spoken young man keeps so well 
up with you that you can’t prevent his taking the lib- 
erty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency : “ Sir 
it is not begging that is my intention for I was brought 
up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade 
I should not know sir how to follow it as a trade if such 
were my shameful wishes for the best of mothers long 
taught otherwise and in the best of omes though now 
reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my 
business was the law-stationering and I was favorably 
known to the Solicitor- General the Attorney- General the 
majority of the Judges and the ole of the legal profession 
but through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a 
friend for whom I became security and he no other than 
my own wife’s brother the brother of my own wife I was 
cast forth with my tender partner and three young chil- 
dren not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation but 
to make my w r ay to the seaport town of Dover where 
I have a relative i in respect not only that will assist me 
but that would trust me with untold gold Sir in appier 
times and hare this calamity fell upon me I made for 
my amusement when I little thought that I should ever 
need it excepting for my air this ” — here the well- 
spoken young man puts his hand into his breast — “ this 
comb ! Sir I implore you in the name of charity to pur- 
chase a tortoise-shell comb which is a genuine article 
at any price that your humanity may put upon it and may 
the blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating 
arts the return of a husband and a father from Dover 


JOHN ANDERSON TRAMP. 


155 


upon the cold stone seats of London Bridge ever attend 
you Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you I 
implore you to buy this comb ! ” By this time, being a 
reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for 
the well-spoken young man, who will stop short and ex- 
press his disgust and his want of breath, in a long expec- 
toration, as you leave him behind. 

Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright 
summer day, at the corner of the next little town or 
village, you may find another kind of tramp, embodied 
in the persons of a most exemplary couple whose only 
improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the 
last of their little All on soap. They are a man and 
woman, spotless to behold — John Anderson, with the 
frost on his short smock-frock instead of his “ pow,” at- 
tended by Mrs. Anderson. John is over-ostentatious 
of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a curious and, 
you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of 
girdle of white linen wound about his waist — a girdle, 
snowy as Mrs. Anderson’s apron. This cleanliness was 
the expiring effort of the respectable couple, and nothing 
then remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon 
his spade in snow-white copy-book characters, hungry ! 
and to sit down here. Yes ; one thing more remained 
to Mr. Anderson — his character ; Monarchs could not 
deprive him of his hard-earned character. Accordingly, 
as you come up with this spectacle of virtue in distress, 
Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent curtsey presents 
for your consideration a certificate from a Doctor of Di- 
vinity, the reverend the Yicar of Upper Dodgington, who 
informs his Christian friends and all whom it may con- 
cern that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, 
are persons to whom you cannot be too liberal. This 


156 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


benevolent pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit the 
good couple out, for with half an eye you can recognize 
his autograph on the spade. 

Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable 
part of whose stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed de- 
meanor. He is got up like a countryman, and you will 
often come upon the poor fellow, while he is endeavor- 
ing to decipher the inscription on a milestone — quite a 
fruitless endeavor, for he cannot read. He asks your 
pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this 
tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all round the 
prospect while he talks to you), but all of us shold do as 
we wold be done by, and he ’ll take it kind, if you ’ll put 
a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest son 
as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this 
heere Orspit’l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby’s 
own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then 
produces from under his dark frock (being always very 
slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse, 
from which he takes a scrap of paper. On this scrap 
of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, 
“ Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy 
man, to the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton ” — 
a matter of some difficulty at the moment, seeing that the 
request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of Hert- 
fordshire. The more you endeavor to indicate where 
Brighton is — when you have with the greatest difficulty 
remembered — the less the devoted father can be made 
to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the 
prospect ; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you 
recommend the faithful parent to begin by going to St. 
Albans, and present him with half-a-crown. It does him 
good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him forward, since you 


THE “GENTLEMAN” TRAMP. 


157 


find him lying drunk that same evening in the wheel- 
wright’s sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are, 
opposite the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers. 

But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is 
the tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman. 
“ Educated,” he writes, from the village beer-shop in 
pale ink of a ferruginous complexion ; “ educated at 
Trin. Coll. Cam. — nursed in the lap of affluence — once 
in my small way the patron of the Muses,” &c. &c. &c. 
— surely a sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle, to 
help him on to the market-town where he thinks of giv- 
ing a Lecture to the fruges consumere nati , on things in 
general? This shameful creature lolling about hedge 
tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from being 
black, that they look as if they never can have been 
black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage 
| tramp. He would sponge on the poorest boy for a far- 
f thing, and spurn him when he had got it ; he would inter- 
I pose (if he could get anything by it) between the baby 
; and the mother’s breast. So much lower than the com- 
i pany he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being 
higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he 
. maunders* on between the luxuriant hedges : where (to 
t my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and 
, sweetbrier are the worse for his going by, and need 
j time to recover from the taint of him in the air. 

The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or 
! six together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their 
shabby bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut 
from some roadside wood, are not eminently prepossess- 
ing, but are much less objectionable. There is a tramp- 
fellowship among them. They pick one another up at 
resting stations, and go on in companies. They always 


158 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


go at a fast swing — though they generally limp too — 
and there is invariably one of the company who has much 
ado to keep up with the rest. They generally talk about 
horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking : 
or, one of the company relates some recent experi- 
ences of the road — which are always disputes and diffi- 
culties. As for example. “ So as I’m a standing at the 
pump in the market, blest if there don’t come up a 
Beadle, and he ses, 4 Must n’t stand here,’ he ses. 4 Why 
not ? ’ I ses. 4 No beggars allowed in this town,’ he ses. 
4 Who ’s a beggar ? ’ I ses. 4 You are,’ he ses. 4 Who 
ever see me beg ? Did you ? ’ I ses. 4 Then you ’re a 
tramp,’ he ses. 4 1 ’d rather be that, than a Beadle,’ I 
ses.” (The company express great approval.) 44 4 Would 
you,’ he ses to me. 4 Yes I would,’ I ses to him. 4 Well,’ 
he ses, 4 anyhow, get out of this town.’ 4 Why, blow 
your little town ! ’ I ses, 4 who wants to be in it ? Wot 
does your dirty little town mean by cornin’ and s tickin’ 
itself in the road to anywhere ? Why don’t you get a 
shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o’ people’s 
way ? ’ ” (The company expressing the highest approval 
and laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.) 

Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they 
not all over England, in this Midsummer time ? Where 
does the lark sing, the com grow, the mill turn, the 
river run, and they are not among the lights and shad- 
ows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock- 
mending, knife-grinding ? Surely, a pleasant thing, if 
we were in that condition of life, to grind our way 
through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. For the first six 
weeks or so, we should see the sparks we ground off, 
fiery bright against a background of green wheat and 
green leaves. A little later, and the ripe harvest would 


TRAMP HANDICRAFT MAN. 


159 


pale our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the 
dark newly-turned land for a background again, and they 
were red once more. By that time, we should have 
ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the whirr of our 
wheel would be lost in the breaking of the waves. Our 
next variety in sparks would be derived from contrast with 
the gorgeous medley of colors in the autumn woods, and, 
by the time we had ground our way round to the heathy 
lands between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous 
stroke of business all along, we should show like a little 
firework in the light frosty air, and be the next best 
thing to the blacksmith’s forge. Very agreeable, too, to 
go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we should be 
of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a bot- 
tomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, 
looking over at osier-beds. Among all the innumerable 
occupations that cannot possibly be transacted without 
the assistance of lookers-on, chair-mending may take a 
station in the first rank. When we sat down with our 
backs against the barn or the public-house, and began to 
mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us. 
When all the children came to look at us, and the tailor, 
and the general dealer, and the farmer who had been giv- 
ing a small order at the little saddler’s, and the groom 
from the great house, and the publican, and even the two 
skittle-players (and here note that, howsoever busy all 
the rest of village human-kind may be, there will always 
be two people with leisure to play at skittles, wherever 
village skittles are), what encouragement would be on 
us to plait and weave ! No one looks at Us while w r e 
plait and weave these words. Clock-mending again. 
Except for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock 
under our arm, and the monotony of making the bell 


160 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


go, whenever we came to a human habitation, what a 
r pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage- 
clock, and set it talking to the cottage family again. 
Likewise we foresee great interest in going round by 
the park plantations, under the overhanging boughs 
(hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding like 
mad across and across the checkered ground before us) 5 
and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, until 
we came to the Keeper’s lodge. Then, would the Keep- 
er be discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, 
smoking his pipe. Then, on our accosting him in the way 
of our trade, would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting 
“ t’ ould clock ” in the kitchen. Then, would Mrs. Keep- 
er ask us into the lodge, and on due examination we 
should offer to make a good job of it for eighteen-pence : 
which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling and 
clinking among the chubby awe-struck little Keepers for 
an hour and more. So completely to the family’s satis- 
faction would we achieve our work, that the Keeper 
would mention how that there was something wrong 
with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the Hall, 
and that if we thought good of going up to the house- 
keeper on the chance of that job too, why he would take 
us. Then, should we go, among the branching oaks and 
the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known to the 
Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we 
went along, until we came to the old Hall, solemn and 
grand. Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round 
by the stables, would the Keeper take us in, and as we 
passed we should observe how spacious and stately the 
stables, and how fine the painting of the horses’ names 
over their stalls, and how solitary all : the family being 
in London. Then, should we find ourselves presented 


CLOCK-MENDING TRAMPS. 


161 


to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needle- 
work, in a bay-window looking out upon a mighty grim 
red-brick quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespect- 
fully throwing somersaults over the escutcheons of the 
noble family. Then, our services accepted and we insin- 
uated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should 
find it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that 
would hold us until dark. Then, should we fall to work, 
with a general impression of Ghosts being about, and of 
pictures in-doors that of a certainty came out of their 
frames and “ walked,” if the family would only own it. 
Then, should we work and work, until the day gradually 
turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned 
to dark. Our task at length accomplished, we should be 
taken into an enormous servants’ hall, and there regaled 
'with beef and bread, and powerful ale. Then, paid free- 
ly, we should be at liberty to go, and should be told by 
a pointing helper to keep round over yinder by the 
blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till we 
should see the town-lights right afore us. Then, feeling 
lonesome, should we desire upon the whole, that the ash 
had not been blasted, or that the helper had had the 
maimers not to mention it. However, we should keep 
on, all right, till suddenly the stable-bell would strike 
ten in the dolefullest way, quite chilling our blood, 
though w r e had so lately taught him how to acquit him- 
self. Then, as we went on, should we recall old stories, 

, and dimly consider what it would be most advisable to 
i do, in the event of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer 
; eyes, coming up and saying, “ I want you to come to a 
! churchyard and mend a church-clock. Follow me!” 

! Then, should we make a burst to get clear of the trees, 

! and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the 
11 


1G2 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


town-lights bright ahead of us. So should we lie that 
night at the ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, 
and rise early next morning to be betimes on tramp 
again. 

Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by 
night at their “ lodges ” which are scattered all over the 

o o 

country. Bricklaying is another of the occupations that 
can by no means be transacted in rural parts, without the 
assistance of spectators — of as many as can be convened. 
In thinly-peopled spots, I have known bricklayers on 
tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sen- 
sible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they them- 
selves have set up in that capacity, and have been unable 
to subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the 
job, for two or three days together. Sometimes, the 
“ navvy,” on tramp, with an extra pair of half-boots over 
his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take a sim- 
ilar part in a job of excavation, and will look at it with- 
out engaging in it, until all his money is gone. The 
current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last 
summer to want a little body of workmen for a certain 
spell of work in a pleasant part of the country ; and I 
w r as at one time honored with the attendance of as many 
as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six. 

Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in the 
summer-time, without storing up knowledge of the many 
tramps who go from one oasis of town or village to an- 
other, to sell a stock in trade, apparently not worth a 
shilling when sold ? Shrimps are a favorite commodity 
for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft 
and spongy character, coupled with Spanish nuts and 
brandy-balls. The stock is carried on the head in a 
basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the 


SOLDIER AND SAILOR TRAMPS. — CARAVANS. 163 


trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading times. 
Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly \ 
with a certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much 
anxious balancing of baskets ; and also with a long Chi- 
nese sort of eye, which an overweighted forehead would 
seem to have squeezed into that form. 

On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great 
rivers, behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should 
happen never to have asked yourself whether his uniform 
is suited to his work, perhaps the poor fellow’s appearance 
as he comes distressfully towards you, with his absurdly 
tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his hand, and 
his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may suggest 
the personal inquiry, how you think you would like it. 
Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is 
somewhat too thick for land service. But, why the 
tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet 
waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one 
of the great secrets of nature that will never be dis- 
covered. 

I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered 
on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, be- 
tween the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of 
grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, 
and it lies high and airy, with the distant river stealing 
steadily away to the ocean, like a man’s life. To gain 
the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, 
blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon render illegible but 
for peering travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, 
you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may. 
So, all the tramps with carts or caravans — the Gypsy- 
tramp, the Show- tramp, the Cheap Jack — find it impos- 
sible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn 


164 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. 
Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires 
that have scorched its grass ! What tramp-children do 
I see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a gymna- 
sium of the shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of 
the flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled old 
horse who is not much more like a horse than any cheap 
toy would be ! Here, do I encounter the cart of mats 
and brooms and baskets — with all thoughts of business 
given to the evening wind — with the stew made and 
being served out — with Cheap Jack and Dear Jill strik- 
ing soft music out of the plates that are rattled like war- 
like cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and markets 
— their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of 
the nightingales as they begin to sing in the woods behind 
them, that if I were to propose to deal, they would sell 
me anything at cost price. On this hallowed ground has 
it been my happy privilege (let me whisper it), to behold 
the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating meat- 
pie with the Giant : while, by the hedge-side, on the box 
of blankets which I* knew contained the snakes, were set 
forth the cups and saucers and the teapot. It was on an 
evening in August, that I chanced upon this ravishing 
spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined 
half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs and 
seemed indifferent to Nature, the white hair of the gra- 
cious Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and 
her pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape. I heard 
only a single sentence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a 
talent for modest repartee. The ill-mannered Giant — 
accursed be his evil race ! — had interrupted the Lady 
in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted corner 
of the wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, 


HOPPING. 


165 


“ Now, Cobby ; ” — Cobby ! so short a name ! — “ ain’t 
one fool enough to talk at a time ? ” 

Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, 
though not so near it as that the song trolled from tap 
or bench at door, can invade its woodland silence, is a 
little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny was 
ever known to pass in warm weather. Before its entrance 
are certain pleasant trimmed limes : likewise, a cool well, 
with so musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the 
bucket-rim will make a horse prick up his ears and neigh, 
upon the droughty road half a mile off. This is a house 
of great resort for haymaking tramps and harvest tramps, 
insomuch that they sit within, drinking their mugs of 
beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare 
out of the open windows, as if the whole establishment 
were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons. Later in 
the season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, 
will swarm with hopping tramps. They come in fami- 
lies, men, women, and children, every family provided 
with a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a number of 
babies, and too often with some poor sick creature quite 
unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell 
of the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. Many of 
these hoppers are Irish, but many come from London. 
They crowd all the roads, and camp under all the hedges 
and on all the scraps of common-land, and live among 
and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the hop- 
gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look as if they 
had been laid waste by an invading army. Then, there 
is a vast exodus of tramps out of the county; and if 
you ride or drive round any turn of any road, at more 
than a foot pace, you will be bewildered to find that you 
have charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that 


166 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


there are splashing lip all around you, in the utmost 
prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron 
pots, and a good-humored multitude of both sexes and 
all ages, equally divided between perspiration and intox- 
ication. 


A VISIT TO DULLBOROUGH. 


167 


XII. 

DULLBOROUGH TOWN. 

It lately happened that I found myself rambling 
about the scenes among which my earliest days were 
passed ; scenes from which I departed when I was a 
child, and which I did not revisit until I was a man. 
This is no uncommon chance, but one that befalls some 
of us any day ; perhaps it may not be quite uninterest- 
ing to compare notes with the reader respecting an ex- 
perience so familiar and a journey so uncommercial. 

I call my boyhood’s home (and I feel like a Tenor 
in an English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. 
Most of us come from Dullborough w T ho come from a 
country town. 

As I left Dullborough in the days when there were 
no railroads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. 
Through all the years that have since passed, have I 
ever lost the smell of the damp straw in which I was 
packed — like game — and forwarded, carriage paid, to 
the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London ? There 
was no other inside passenger, and I consumed my sand- 
wiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all 
the way and I thought life sloppier than I had expected 
to find it. 

With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cav- 
alierly shunted back into Dullborough the other day, by 
train. My ticket had been previously collected, like my 


168 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


taxes, and my shining new portmanteau had had a great 
plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act of 
Parliament to offer an objection to anything that was 
done to it, or me, under a penalty of not less than forty 
shillings or more than five pounds, compoundable for a 
term of imprisonment. When I had sent my disfigured 
property on to the hotel, I began to look about me ; and 
the first discovery I made, was, that the Station had 
swallowed up the playing-field. 

It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the 
hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had 
given place to the stoniest of jolting roads ; while, 
beyond the Station, an ugly dark monster of a tunnel 
kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them and 
were ravenous for more destruction. The coach that 
had carried me away, was melodiously called Timpson’s 
Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson, at the coaffi- 
office up-street ; the locomotive engine that had brought 
me back, was called severely No. 97, and belonged to 
S. E. R., and was spitting ashes and hot water over the 
blighted ground. 

When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a 
prisoner whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked 
in again over the low wall, at the scene of departed glo- 
ries. Here, in the haymaking time, had I been delivered 
from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile 
(of haycock), by my countrymen, the victorious British 
(boy next door and his two cousins), and had been recog- 
nized with ecstasy by my affianced one (Miss Green), 
who had come all the way from England (second house 
in the terrace) to ransom me, and marry me. Here, had 
I first heard in confidence, from one whose father was 
greatly connected, being under Government, of the ex- 


USURPATION OF PICKFORD. 


169 


istence of a terrible banditti, called “ The Radicals,” 
whose principles were, that the Prince Regent wore 
stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and 
that the army and navy ought to be put down — horrors 
at which I trembled in my bed, after supplicating that 
the Radicals might be speedily taken and hanged. 
Here, too, had we, the small boys of Boles’s, had that 
cricket-match against the small boys of Coles’s, when 
Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and 
when, instead of instantly hitting out at one another 
with the utmost fury, as we had all hoped and expected, 
those sneaks had said respectively, “ I hope Mrs. Boles 
is well,” and “ I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are doing 
charmingly.” Could it be that, after all this, and much 
more, the Playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expec- 
torated boiling water and red-hot cinders on it, and the 
whole belonged by Act of Parliament to S. E. R. ? 

As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy 
heart for a walk all over the town. And first of Timp- 
son’s, up-street. When I departed from Dullborough in 
the strawy arms of Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, Timp- 
son’s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little 
coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window, 
which looked beautiful by night, representing one of 
Timpson’s coaches in the act of passing a milestone on 
the London road with greait velocity, completely full in- 
side and out, and all the passengers dressed in the first 
style of fashion, and enjoying themselves tremendously. 
I found no such place as Timpson’s now — no such 
bricks and rafters, not to mention the name — no such 
edifice on the teeming earth. Pickford had come and 
knocked Timpson’s down. Pickford had not only 
knocked Timpson’s down, but had knocked two or three 


170 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


houses down on each side of Timpson’s, and then had 
knocked the whole into one great establishment, with a 
pair of big gates, in and out of which, his (Pickford’s) 
wagons are, in these days, always rattling, with their 
drivers sitting up so high, that they look in at the second- 
floor windows of the old-fashioned houses in the High 
Street as they shake the town. I have not the honor of 
Pickford’s acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me 
an injury, not to say committed an act of boyslaughter, 
in running over my childhood in this rough manner ; and 
if ever I meet Pickford driving one of his own monsters, 
and smoking a pipe the while (which is the custom of 
his men), he shall know by the expression of my eye, if 
it catches his, that there is something wrong between us. 

Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come 
rushing into Dullborough and deprive the town of a pub- 
lic picture. He is not Napoleon Bonaparte. When he 
took down the transparent stage-coach, he ought to have 
given the town a transparent van. With a gloomy con- 
viction that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimagina- 
tive, I proceeded on my way. 

It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a 
night-bell at my door, for in my very young days I was 
taken to so many lyings-in that I wonder I escaped be- 
coming a professional martyr to them in after-life. I 
suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large 
circle of married acquaintance. However that was, as I 
continued my walk through Dullborough, I found many 
houses to be solely associated in my mind with this par- 
ticular interest. At one little greengrocer’s shop, down 
certain steps from the street, I remembered to have 
waited on a lady who had had four children (lam afraid 
to write five, though I fully believe it was five) at a birth. 


AN EVERGREEN GREENGROCER. 


171 


This meritorious woman held quite a Reception in her 
room on the morning when I was introduced there, and 
the sight of the house brought vividly to my mind how 
the four (five) deceased young people lay, side by side, 
on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers : ‘reminding me by 
a homely association, which I suspect their complexion to 
have assisted, of pigs’ feet as they are usually displayed 
at a neat tripe-shop. Hot caudle was handed round on 
the occasion, and I further remembered as I stood con- 
templating the greengrocer’s, that a subscription was en- 
tered into among the company, which became extremely 
alarming to my consciousness of having pocket-money 
on my person. This fact being known to my conductress, 
whoever she was, I was earnestly exhorted to contribute, 
but resolutely declined : therein disgusting the company, 
who gave me to understand that I must dismiss all ex- 
pectations of going to Heaven. 

How does it happen that when all else is change 
wherever one goes, there yet seem, in every place, to be 
some few people who never alter ? As the sight of the 
greengrocer’s house recalled these trivial incidents of 
long ago, the identical greengrocer appeared on the steps, 
with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his shoulder 
against the door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him 
many a time ; indeed, there was his old mark on the 
door-post yet, as if his shadow had become a fixture 
there. It was he himself ; he might formerly have been 
an old-looking young man, or he might now be a young- 
looking old man, but there he was. In walking along 
the street, I had as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, 
or even a transmitted face; here was the very green- 
grocer who had been weighing and handling baskets on 
the morning of .the reception. As he brought with him 


172 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


a dawning remembrance that he had had no proprietary 
interest in those babies, I crossed the road, and accosted 
him on the subject. He was not in the least excited or 
gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of my 
recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of the common — 
he did n’t remember how many it was (as if half a dozen 
babes either way made no difference) — had happened 
to a Mrs. What ’s-her-name, as once lodged there — 
but he didn’t call it to mind, particular. Nettled by 
this phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had left 
the town when I was a child. He slowly returned, 
quite unsoftened, and not without a sarcastic kind of 
complacency, Had I ? Ah ! And did I find it had got 
on tolerably well without me ? Such is the difference (I 
thought, when I had left him a few hundred yards be- 
hind, and was by so much in a better temper) between 
going away from a place and remaining in it. I had no 
right, I reflected, to be angry with the greengrocer for 
his want of interest. I was nothing to him : whereas 
he was the town, the cathedral, the bridge, the river, my 
childhood, and a large slice of my life, to me. 

Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a 
child there. I had entertained the impression that the 
High Street was at least as wide as Regent Street, Lon- 
don, or the Italian Boulevard at Paris. I found it little 
better than a lane. There was a public clock in it, 
which I had supposed to be the finest clock in the world : 
whereas it now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon- 
faced, and weak a clock as ever I saw. It belonged to 
a Town Hall, where I had seen an Indian (who I now 
suppose was n’t an Indian) swallow a sword (which I 
now suppose he didn’t). The edifice had appeared to me 
in those days so glorious a structure, that I had set it up 


THEATRE ROYAL, DULLBOROUGH. 


173 


in my mind as the model on which the Genie of the 
Lamp built the palace for Aladdin. A mean little brick 
heap, like a demented chapel, with a few yawning per- 
sons in leather gaiters, and in the last extremity for some- 
thing to do, lounging at the door with their hands in 
their pockets, and calling themselves a Corn Exchange ! 

The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the 
fishmonger, who had a compact show of stock in his 
window, consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps — 
and I resolved to comfort my mind by going to look at 
it. Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, 
had first appeared to me there, and had made my heart 
leap with terror by backing up against the stage-box in 
which I was posted, while struggling for life against the 
virtuous Richmond. It was within those walls that I 
had learnt, as from a page of English history, how that 
wicked King slept in war-time on a sofa much too short 
for him, and how fearfully his conscience troubled his 
boots. There,* too, had I first seen the funny country- 
man, but countryman of noble principles, in a flowered 
waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it on the 
ground, and pull off his coat, saying, “ Dom thee, squire, 
coom on with thy fistes then ! ” At which the lovely 
young woman who kept company with him (and who 
went out gleaning, in a narrow white muslin apron with 
five beautiful bars of five different colored ribbons across 
it) was so frightened for his sake, that she fainted 
away. Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to 
the knowledge of in that sanctuary : of which not the 
least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an 
awful resemblance to the Thanes and other proper in- 
habitants of Scotland ; and that the good King Duncan 
could n’t rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out 


174 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


of it, and calling himself somebody else. To the Thea- 
tre, therefore, I repaired for consolation. But I found 
very little, for it was in a bad and a declining way. A 
dealer in wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his 
trade into the box-office, and the theatrical money was 
taken — when it came — in a kind of meat-safe in the 
passage. The dealer in wine and bottled beer must 
have insinuated himself under the stage too ; for he an- 
nounced that he had various descriptions of alcoholic 
drinks “ in the wood,” and there was no possible stowage 
for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, he was by de- 
grees eating the establishment away to the core, and 
would soon have sole possession of it. It was To Let, 
and hopelessly so, for its old purposes ; and there had 
been no entertainment within its walls for a long time, 
except a Panorama ; and even that had been announced 
as “ pleasingly instructive,” and I knew too well the 
fatal meaning and the leaden import of those terrible 
expressions. No, there was no comfort in the Theatre. 
It was mysteriously gone, like my own youth. Unlike 
my own youth, it might be coming back some day ; but 
there was little promise of it. 

As the town was placarded with references to the 
Dullborough Mechanics’ Institution, I thought I would 
go and look at that establishment next. There had been 
no such thing in the town, in my young day, and it oc- 
curred to me that its extreme prosperity might have 
brought adversity upon the Drama. I found the Institu- 
tion with some difficulty, and should scarcely have known 
that I had found it if I had judged from its external 
appearance only ; but this was attributable to its never 
having been finished, and having no front : consequently, 
it led a modest and retired existence up a stable-yard. 


MECHANICS’ INSTITUTION. 


175 


It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a most flourishing Institu- 
tion, and of the highest benefit to the town : two triumphs 
which I was glad to understand were not at all impaired 
by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged 
to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots. 
It had a large room, which was approached by an infirm 
step-ladder : the builder having declined to construct the 
intended staircase, without a present payment in cash, 
which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of 
the Institution) seemed unaccountably bashful about sub- 
scribing. The large room had cost — or would, when 
paid for — five hundred pounds ; and it had more mortar 
in it and more echoes, than one might have expected to 
get for the money. It was fitted up with a platform, and 
the usual lecturing tools, including a large blackboard 
of a menacing appearance. On referring to lists of the 
courses of lectures that had been given in this thriving 
Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting that 
human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to 
be relieved and diverted ; and a furtive sliding in of any 
poor make-weight piece of amusement, shamefacedly and 
edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was necessary for 
the members to be knocked on the head with Gas, Air, 
Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods, 
Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, 
and Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be 
tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the negro 
singers in the court costume of the reign of George the 
Second. Likewise, that they must be stunned by a 
weighty inquiry whether there was internal evidence in 
Shakspeare’s works, to prove that his uncle by the 
mother’s side lived for some years at Stoke Newington, 
before they were brought- to by a Miscellaneous Concert. 


176 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


But, indeed the masking of entertainment, and pretend- 
ing it was something else — as people mask bedsteads 
when they are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms, and 
make believe that they are bookcases, sofas, chests of 
drawers, anything rather than bedsteads — was manifest 
even in the pretence of dreariness that the unfortunate 
entertainers themselves felt obliged in decency to put 
forth when they came here. One very agreeable pro- 
fessional singer who travelled with two professional la- 
dies, knew better than to introduce either of those ladies 
to sing the ballad “ Cornin’ through the Eye” without 
prefacing it himself, with some general remarks on wheat 
and clover ; and even then, he dared not for his life call 
the song, a song, but disguised it in the bill as an “ Il- 
lustration.” In the library, also — fitted with shelves 
for three thousand books, and containing upwards of 
one hundred and seventy (presented copies mostly), 
seething their edges in damp plaster — there was such 
a painfully apologetic return of 62 offenders who had 
read Travels, Popular Biography, and mere Fiction de- 
scriptive of the aspirations of the hearts and souls of 
mere human creatures like themselves ; and such an 
elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had 
down Euclid after the day’s occupation and confinement ; 
and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after ditto; and 1 
who had bad down Theology after ditto ; and 4 who had 
worried Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Log- 
arithms all at once after ditto; that I suspected the 
boasted class to be one man, who had been hired to do it. 

Emerging from the Mechanics’ Institution and con- 
tinuing my walk about the town, I still noticed every- 
where the prevalence, to an extraordinary degree, of this 
custom of putting the natural demand for amusement 


VICIOUS AMUSEMENT. 


177 


out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and 
pretending that it was swept away. And yet it was 
ministered to, in a dull and abortive manner, by all who 
made this feint. Looking in at what is called in Dull- 
borough “ the serious bookseller’s,” where, in my child- 
hood, I had studied the faces of numbers of gentlemen 
depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each side of them, 
and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain 
printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at 
jocosity and dramatic effect, even in them — yes, verily, 
even on the part of one very wrathful expounder who 
bitterly anathematized a poor little Circus. Similarly, 
in the reading provided for the young people enrolled in 
the Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I found 
the writers generally under a distressing sense that they 
must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and delude 
the young persons into the belief that they were going 
to be interesting. As I looked in at this window for 
twenty minutes by the clock, I am in a position to offer 
a friendly remonstrance — not bearing on this particular 
point — to the designers and engravers of the pictures in 
those publications. Have they considered the awful 
consequences likely to flow from their representations of 
Virtue ? Have they asked themselves the question, 
whether the terrific prospect of acquiring that fearful 
I chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble disloca- 
| tion of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, 
1 which they represent as inseparable from Goodness, may 
! not tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil ? A most 
impressive example (if I had believed it) of what a 
I Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they mend 
their ways, was presented to me in this same shop-win- 
dow. When they were leaning (they were intimate 
12 


178 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with surpass- 
ingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, they 
were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be 
agreeable men if they would not be beasts. But, when 
they had got over their bad propensities, and when, as 
a consequence, their heads had swelled alarmingly, their 
hair had got so curly that it lifted their blown-out cheeks 
up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could 
do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they 
never could do any sleep, they presented a spectacle cal- 
culated to plunge a timid nature into the depths of In- 
famy. 

But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it 
last, admonished me that I had stayed here long enough ; 
and I resumed my walk. 

I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I 
was suddenly brought up by the sight of a man who got 
out of a little phaeton at the doctor’s door, and went into 
the doctor’s house. Immediately, the air was filled with 
the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective of years 
opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness of this 
man keeping a wicket, and I said, “ God bless my soul ! 
Joe Specks!” 

Through many changes and much work, I had pre- 
served a tenderness for the memory of Joe, forasmuch 
as we had made the acquaintance of Roderick Random 
together, and had believed him to be no ruffian, but an 
ingenuous and engaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy 
left in the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorn- 
ing even to read the brass plate on the door — so sure 
was I — I rang the bell and informed the servant-maid 
that a stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks. Into a 
room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to await his 


JOE SPECKS. 


179 


coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate acci- 
dents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe. Portrait of 
Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful 
patient to Mr. Specks, presentation sermon from local 
clergymen, dedication poem from local poet, dinner-card 
from local nobleman, tract on balance of power from local 
refugee, inscribed Hommage de V auteur a Specks. 

When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him 
with a smile that I was not a patient, he seemed rather 
at a loss to perceive any reason for smiling in connection 
with that fact, and inquired to what was he to attribute 
the honor ? I asked him, with another smile, could he 
remember me at all ? He had not (he said) that pleas- 
ure. I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr. 
Specks, when he said reflectively, “ And yet there ’s a 
something too.” Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his 
eyes that looked well, and I asked him if he could inform 
me, as a stranger who desired to know and had not 
the means of reference at hand, what the name of the 
young lady was, who married Mr. Random ? Upon 
thqt, he said “ Narcissa,” and, after staring for a moment, 
called me by my name, shook me by the hand, and melted 
into a roar of laughter. “ Why, of course, you ’ll re- 
member Lucy Green,” he said, after we had talked a 
little. “ Of course,” said I. “ Whom do you think she 
married ? ” said he. “ You ? ” I hazarded. “ Me,” said 
Specks, “ and you shall see her.” So I saw her, and 
she was fat, and if all the hay in the world had been 
heaped upon her, it could scarcely have altered her face 
more than Time had altered it from my remembrance of 
the face that had once looked down upon me into the 
fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam. But, when her 
youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with 


180 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


them, and we had no other company than Specks, Junior, 
Barrister-at-Law, who went away as soon as the cloth 
was removed, to look after the young lady to vdiom he 
was going to be married next week), I saw again, in 
that little daughter, the little face of the hayfield, un- 
changed, and it quite touched my foolish heart. We 
talked immensely, Specks and Mrs. Specks, and I, and 
we spoke of our old selves as though our old selves were 
dead and gone, and indeed indeed they were — dead 
and gone, as the playing-field that had become a wilder- 
ness of rusty iron, and the property of S. E. R. 

Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the 
rays of interest that I wanted and should otherwise have 
missed in it, and linked its present to its past, with a 
highly agreeable chain. And in Specks’s society I had 
new occasion to observe what I had before noticed in 
similar communications among other men. All the 
schoolfellows and others of old, whom I inquired about, 
had either done superlatively well or superlatively ill 
— had either become uncertificated bankrupts, or been 
felonious and got themselves transported ; or had made 
great hits in life, and done wonders. And this is so 
commonly the case, that I never can imagine what be- 
comes of all the mediocre people of people’s youth — 
especially, considering that we find no lack of the spe- 
cies in our maturity. But, I did not propound this dif- 
ficulty to Specks, for no pause in the conversation gave 
me an occasion. Nor, could I discover one single flaw 
in the good doctor — when he reads this, he will receive 
in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record — except . 
that he had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he 
confounded Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway ; who never 
knew Random, howsoever intimate with Pickles. 


TRAVELLER MORE CHANGED THAN TOWN. 181 


When I went alone to the Kail way to catch my train 
at night (Specks had meant to go with me, but was in- 
opportunely called out), I was in a more charitable mood 
with Dullborough than I had been all day ; and yet in 
my heart I had loved it all day too. Ah ! who was I 
that I should quarrel with the town for being changed to 
me, when I myself had came back, so changed, to it ! 
All my early readings and early imaginations dated from 
this place, and I took them away so full of innocent con- 
struction and guileless belief, and I brought them back 
so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the 
worse ! 


182 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XIII. 

, NIGHT WALES. 

Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, refer- 
able to a distressing impression, caused me to walk about 
the streets all night, for a series of several nights. The 
disorder might have taken a long time to conquer, if it 
had been faintly experimented on in bed ; but, it was 
soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up direct- 
ly after lying down, and going out, and coming home 
tired at sunrise. 

In the course of those nights, I finished my education 
in a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My prin- 
cipal object being to get through the night, the pursuit 
of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people 
who have no other object every night in the year. 

The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, 
and cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the 
night perspective looked sufficiently long at half-past 
twelve : which was about my time for confronting it. 

The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which 
it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed 
one of the first entertainments offered to the contempla- 
tion of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. 
We lost a great deal of companionship when the late 
public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the pot- , j 
men thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street ; j 
but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. 


FALLING OFF ASLEEP. 


183 


If we were very lucky, a policeman’s rattle sprang and a 
fray turned up ; but, in general, surprisingly little of this 
diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket, 
which is the worst kept part of London, and about 
Kent Street in the Borough, and along a portion of the 
line of the Old Kent road, the peace was seldom vio- 
lently broken. But, it was always the case that Lon- 
don, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging to 
it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. After all 
seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half a dozen would 
surely follow; and Houselessness even observed that 
intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attracted 
towards each other : so that we knew when we saw one 
drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, 
that another drunken object would stagger up before five 
minutes were out, to fraternize or fight with it. When 
we made a divergence from the regular species of drunk- 
ard, the thin-armed puff-faced leaden-lipped gin-drinker, 
and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent ap- 
pearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in ✓ 
soiled mourning. . As the street experience in the night, 
so the street experience in the day ; the common folks 
who come unexpectedly into a little property, come un- 
expectedly into a deal of liquor. 

At length these flickering sparks would die away, 
worn out — the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed 
from some late pie-man or hot-potato man — and London 
would sink to rest. And then the yearning of the house- 
less mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted 
place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one 
being up — nay, even so much as awake, for the house- 
less eye looked out for lights in windows. 

Walking the streets under the pattering rain, House- 


184 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


lessness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing 
but the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, 
here and there, two policemen in conversation, or the 
sergeant or inspector looking after his men. Now and 
then in the night — but rarely — Houselessness would 
become aware of a furtive head peering out of a doorway 
a few yards before him, and, coming up with the head, 
would find a man standing bolt upright to keep within 
the doorway’s shadow, and evidently intent upon no par- 
ticular service to society. Under a kind of fascination, 
and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time, Houseless- 
ness and this gentleman would eye one another from 
head to foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, 
mutually suspicious. Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and 
coping, splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and- 
by the houseless shadow would fall upon the stones that 
pave the way to Waterloo Bridge ; it being in the house- 
less mind to have a halfpennyworth of excuse for saying 
“ Good night ” to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse 
of his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and a 
good woollen neck-shawl were comfortable things to see 
in conjunction with the toll-keeper ; also his brisk wake- 
fulness was excellent company when he rattled the 
change of halfpence down upon that metal table of his, : 
like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful 
thoughts, and did n’t care for the coming of dawn. There 
was need of encouragement on the threshold of the 
bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The chopped up 
murdered man had not been lowered with a rope over ; 
the parapet when those nights were ; he was alive, and 
slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed 
by any dream of where he was to come. But the river 
had an awful look, the buildings on the banks were muf- 


RIVER AND THEATRE. 


185 


fled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to 
originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides 
were holding them to show where they went down. 
The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil 
conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the 
immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon 
the river. 

Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there 
was but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the 
theatres came next. Grim and black within, at night, 
those great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the 
rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the 
seats all empty. One would think that nothing in them 
knew itself at such a time but Yorick’s skull. In one of 
my night walks, as the church steeples were shaking the 
March winds and rain with the strokes of Four, I passed 
the outer boundary of one of these great deserts, and 
' entered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped 
my well-known way to the stage and looked over the 
orchestra — which was like a great grave dug for a time 
of pestilence — into the void beyond. A dismal cavern 
of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like 
everything else, and nothing visible through mist and fog 
and space, but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at 
my feet where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry 
of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless of the burn- 
ing mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was 
now in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, 
watchfully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready 
to fly at it if it showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a 
watchman, carrying a faint corpse-candle, haunted the 
distant upper gallery and flitted away. Retiring within 
the proscenium, and holding my light above my head 


18G 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


towards the rolled-up curtain — green no more, but black 
as ebony — my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, show- 
ing faint indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and 
cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver might, at 
the bottom of the sea. 

In those small hours when there was no movement in 
the streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take New- 
gate in the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think 
of the prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in at 
the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and 
light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall. Not 
an inappropriate time either, to linger by that wicked 
little Debtors’ Door — shutting tighter than any other 
door one ever saw — which has been Death’s Door to so 
many. In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound 
notes by people tempted up from the country, how many 
hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes — many 
quite innocent — swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent 
w r orld, with the tower of yonder Christian church of 
Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes! Is there 
any haunting of the Bank Parlor by the remorseful 
souls of old directors, in the nights of these later days, I 
wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerato Aceldama of 
an Old Bailey ? 

To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times 
and bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy 
next step, so I would take it, and would make my house- 
less circuit of the Bank, and give a thought to the treas- 
ure within ; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the 
night there, and nodding over the fire. Next, I went to 
Billingsgato, in some hope of market-people, but il prov- 
ing as yet too early, crossed London Bridge and got down 
by the water-side on the Surrey shore among the build- 


DRY ROT IN MEN. 


187 


ings of the great brewery. There was plenty going on 
at the brewery ; and the reek, and the smell of grains, 
and the rattling of the plump dray-horses at their man- 
gers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having 
mingled with this good society, I made a new start with 
a new heart, setting the old King’s Bench prison before 
me for my next object, and resolving, when I should 
come to the wall, to think of poor Horace Kinch, and the 
Dry Rot in men. 

A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and dif- 
ficult to detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace 
Kinch inside the wall of the old King’s Bench prison, 
and it had carried him out with his feet foremost. He 
was a likely man to look at, in the prime of life, well to 
do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among many 
friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and 
pretty children. But, like some fair-looking houses or 
fair-looking ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong 
external revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency 
to lurk and lounge ; to be at street-corners without intel- 
ligible reason ; to be going anywhere when met ; to be 
about many places rather than at any; to do nothing 
tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety 
of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When 
this manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer 
will usually connect it with a vague impression once 
formed or received, that the patient was living a little too 
hard. lie will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over 
in his mind and form the terrible suspicion “ Dry Rot,” 
when he will notice a change for the worse in the pa- 
tient’s appearance : a certain slovenliness and deteriora- 
tion, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor 
ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this succeeds a smell 


188 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


as of strong waters, in the morning ; to that, a looseness 
respecting money ; to that, a stronger smell as of strong 
waters, at all times; to that, a looseness respecting 
everything ; to that, a trembling of the limbs, som- 
nolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is in 
wood, so it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a com- 
pound usury quite incalculable. A plank is found in- 
fected with it, and the whole structure is devoted. Thus 
it had been with the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately 
buried by a small subscription. Those who knew him 
had not nigh done saying, “ So well off, so comfortably 
established, with such hope before him — and yet, it is 
feared, with a slight touch of Dry Rot ! ” when lo ! the 
man was all Dry Rot and dust. 

From the dead wall associated on those houseless 
nights with this too common story, I chose next to wan- 
der by Bethlehem Hospital ; partly, because it lay on my 
road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a night 
fancy in my head which could be best pursued within 
sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this * 
Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the 
sane lie a-dreaming ? Are not all of us outside this hos- 
pital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those 
inside it, every night of our lives ? Are we not nightly 
persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposter- 
ously with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, 
and notabilities of all sorts ? Do we not nightly jumble 
events and personages and times and places, as these do 
daily ? Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleep- 
ing inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try to account 
for them or excuse them, just as these do sometimes in 
respect of their waking delusions ? Said an afflicted man 
to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, “ Sir, I can 


WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 


189 


frequently fly.” I was half ashamed to reflect that so 
could I — by night. Said a woman to me on the same 
occasion, u Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with 
me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni 
in our night-gowns, and his Eoyal Highness the Prince 
Consort does us the honor to make a third on horseback 
in a Field-Marshal’s uniform.” Could I refrain from red- 
dening with consciousness when I remembered the amaz- 
ing royal parties I myself had given (at night), the un- 
accountable viands I had put on table, and my extraor- 
dinary manner of conducting myself on those distin- 
guished occasions ? I wonder that the great master who 
knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each 
day’s life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day’s 
sanity. 

By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and 
was again setting towards the river ; and in a short 
breathing space I was on Westminster Bridge, regaling 
my houseless eyes with the external walls of the British 
Parliament — the perfection of a stupendous institution, I 
know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations and 
succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the 
better now and then for being pricked up to its work. 
Turning off into Old Palace Yard, the Courts of Law 
kept me company for a quarter of an hour ; hinting in 
low whispers what numbers of people they were keeping 
awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible they 
were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors. 
Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another 
quarter of an hour ; suggesting a wonderful procession of 
its dead among the dark arches and pillars, each century 
more amazed by the century following it than by all the 
centuries going before. And indeed in those houseless 


190 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


night walks — which even included cemeteries where 
watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, 
and moved the tell-tale handle of an index which re- 
corded that they had touched it at such an hour — it was 
a solemn consideration what enormous hosts of dead be- 
long to one old great city, and how, if they were raised 
while the living slept, there would not be the space of a 
pin’s point in all the streets and ways for the living to 
come out into. Not only that, but the vast armies of 
dead would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the 
city, and would stretch away all round it, God knows 
how far. 

When a church-clock strikes, on houseless ears in the 
dead of the night, it may be at first mistaken for com- 
pany and hailed as such. But, as the spreading circles 
of vibration, which you may perceive at such a time 
with great clearness, go opening out, forever and ever 
afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has sug- 
gested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the 
sense of loneliness is profounder. Once — it was after 
leaving the Abbey and turning my face north — I came 
to the great steps of Saint Martin’s church as the clock 
was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a moment 
more I should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up 
at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, 
struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never 
heard. We then stood face to face looking at one an- 
other, frightened by one another. The creature was like 
a beetle-browed, hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had 
a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together with one 
of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and its teeth 
chattered, and as it stared at me — persecutor, devil, 
ghost, whatever it thought me — it made with its whin- 


COVENT— GARDEN MARKET. 


191 


ing mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried 
dog. Intending to give this ugly object, money, I put 
out my hand to stay it — for it recoiled as it whined and 
snapped — and laid my hand upon its shoulder. Instant- 
ly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in 
the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its 
rags in my hand. • 

Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, 
was wonderful company. The great wagons of cab- 
bages, with growers’ men and boys lying asleep under 
them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden neighbor- 
hoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party. 
But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is 
to be found in the children who prowl about this place ; 
who sleep in the baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any 
object they think they can lay their thieving hands on, 
dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, 
and are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the 
pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked 
feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the com- 
parison one is forced to institute between the growth of 
corruption as displayed in the so much improved and 
cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of corrup- 
tion as displayed in these all uncared for (except inas- 
much as ever-hunted) savages. 

There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden 
Market, and that was more company — warm company, 
too, which was better. Toast of a very substantial qual- 
ity was likewise procurable : though the towzled-headed 
man who made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee- 
room, had n’t got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with 
sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went 
off anew behind the partition into complicated cross-roads 


192 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


of choke and snore, and lost his way directly. Into one 
of these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow 
Street, there came, one morning as I sat over my house- 
less cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a high 
and long snuff-colored coat, and shoes, and, to the best 
of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his 
hat a large cold meat pudding ; a meat pudding so large 
that it was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of the 
hat out with it, This mysterious man was known by 
his pudding, for, on his entering, the man of sleep brought 
him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a large knife and 
fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he stood the 
pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it, 
stabbed it, over-hand, with the knife, like a mortal en- 
emy; then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, 
tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and ate it all 
up. The remembrance of this man with the pudding re- 
mains with me as the remembrance of the most spectral 
person my houselessness encountered. Twice only was 
I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as 
I should say, just out of bed, and presently going back 
to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the 
dagger, and eat his pudding all up. He was a man whose 
figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an exces- 
sively red face, though shaped like a horse’s. On the 
second occasion of my seeing him, he said, huskily to the 
man of sleep, “ Am I red to-night ? ” “ You are,” he 

uncompromisingly answered. “ My mother,” said the 
spectre, “ was a red-faced woman that liked drink, and 
I looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I 
took the complexion.” Somehow, the pudding seemed 
an unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in 
its way no more. 


DAY COMING ON. 


193 


When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, 
a railway terminus with the morning mails coming in, 
was remunerative company. But like most of the com- 
pany to be had in this world, it lasted only a very short 
time. The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the 
porters would emerge from places of concealment, the 
cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the post- 
office carts were already in theirs), and, finally, the bell 
would strike up, and the train would come banging in. 
But there were few passengers and little luggage, and 
everything scuttled away with the greatest expedition. 
The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets — as if 
they had been dragging the country for bodies — would 
fly open as to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of 
lamp, an exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their 
bags of letters ; the engine would blow and heave and 
perspire, like an engine wiping its forehead and saying 
what a run it had had ; and within ten minutes the lamps 
were out, and I was houseless and alone again. 

But now, there were driven cattle on the high road 
near, wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the 
midst of stone walls, and squeeze themselves through six 
inches’ width of iron railing, and getting their heads 
down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-purchase at 
quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every 
devoted creature associated with them a most extraor- 
dinary amount of unnecessary trouble. Now, too, the 
conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge 
that daylight was coming, and straggling workpeople 
were already in the streets, and, as waking life had 
become extinguished with the last pie-man’s sparks, so it 
began to be rekindled with the fires of the first street 
corner breakfast-sellers. And so, by faster and faster 
13 


194 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


degrees, until the last degrees were very fast, the day 
came, and I was tired and could sleep. And it is not, 
as I used to think, going home at such times, the least 
wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region 
of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I 
knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of 
all kinds, if I had chosen ; but they were put out of sight, 
and my houselessness had many miles upon miles of 
streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary 
way. 


DAVY JONES’S LOCKER. 


195 


XIY. 

CHAMBERS. 

Haying occasion to transact some business with a 
solicitor who occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers 
in Gray’s Inn, I afterwards took a turn in the large 
square of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with 
congenial surroundings, my experiences of Chambers. 

I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had 
just left. They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, 
with a mysterious bunk or bulkhead on the landing out- 
side them, of a rather nautical and Screw Collier-like 
appearance than otherwise, and painted an intense black. 
Many dusty years have passed, since the appropriation 
of this Davy Jones’s locker to any purpose, and during 
the whole period within the memory of living man, it 
has been hasped and padlocked. I cannot quite satisfy 
my mind whether it was originally meant for the recep- 
tion of coals, or bodies, or as a place of temporary secu- 
rity for the plunder “ looted ” by laundresses ; but I in- 
cline to the last opinion. It is about breast-high, and 
usually serves as a bulk for defendants in reduced cir- 
cumstances to lean against and ponder at, when they 
come on the hopeful errand of trying to make an ar- 
rangement without money — under which auspicious cir- 
cumstances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman 
they want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade the 
staircase for a considerable period. Against this oppos- 


196 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


ing bulk, in the absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer 
door of the solicitor’s chambers (which is also of an in- 
tense black) stands in dark ambush, half open, and half 
shut, all day. The solicitor’s apartments are three in 
number ; consisting of a slice, a cell, and a wedge. The 
slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell is occupied by 
the principal, and the wedge is devoted to stray papers, 
old game-baskets from the country, a washing-stand, and 
a model of a patent Ship’s Caboose which was exhibited 
in Chancery at the commencement of the present cen- 
tury on an application for an injunction to restrain in- 
fringement. At about half-past nine on every week-day 
morning, the younger of the two clerks (who, I have rea- 
son to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville in the 
articles of pipes and shirts) may be found knocking the 
dust out of his official door-key on the bunk or locker 
before mentioned ; and so exceedingly subject to dust is 
his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity, that in 
exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight has 
fallen on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its 
inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by a kind 
of Bramah erysipelas or small-pox. 

This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, 
when I have had restless occasion to make inquiries or 
leave messages, after office hours) is under the charge of 
a lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely like an old 
family-umbrella : whose dwelling confronts a dead wall 
in a court off Gray’s Inn Lane, and who is usually 
fetched into the passage of that bower, when wanted, 
from some neighboring home of industry, which has 
the curious property of imparting an inflammatory ap- 
pearance to her visage. Mrs. Sweeney is one of the 
race of professed laundresses, and is the compiler of a 


RUINS OF GRAY’S INN. 


197 


remarkable manuscript volume entitled “ Mrs. Sweeney’s 
Book,” from which much curious statistical information 
may be gathered respecting the high prices and small 
uses of soda, soap, sand, firewood, and other such articles. 
I have created a legend in my mind — and consequently 
I believe it with the utmost pertinacity — that the late 
Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under the Honorable 
Society of Gray’s Inn, and that, in consideration of his 
long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed 
to her present post. For, though devoid of personal 
charms, I have observed this lady to exercise a fascina- 
tion over the elderly ticket-porter mind (particularly 
under the gateway, and in corners and entries), which I 
can only refer to her being one of the fraternity, yet not 
competing with it. All that need be said concerning this 
set of chambers, is said, when I have added that it is in 
a large double house in Gray’s Inn Square, very much 
out of repair, and that the outer portal is ornamented in 
a hideous manner with certain stone remains, which have 
the appearance of the dismembered bust, torso, and limbs 
of a petrified bencher. 

Indeed, I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of 
the most depressing institutions in brick and mortar, 
known to the children of men. Can anything be more 
dreary than its arid Square, Sahara Desert of the law, 
with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the dirty win- 
dows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed 
like grave-stones, the crazy gateway giving upon the 
filthy Lane, the scowling iron-barred prison-like passage 
into Yerulam - buildings, the mouldy red -nosed ticket- 
porters with little coffin plates and why with aprons, the 
dry hard atomy-like appearance of the whole dust-heap ? 
When my uncommercial travels tend to this dismal spot, 


198 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


my comfort is, its rickety state. Imagination gloats over 
the fulness of time, when the staircases shall have quite 
tumbled down — they are daily wearing into an ill-sa- 
vored powder, but have not quite tumbled down yet — 
when the last old prolix bencher all of the olden time, 
shall have been got out of an upper window by means 
of a Fire-Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union ; 
when the last clerk shall have engrossed the last parch- 
ment behind the last splash on the last of the mud- 
stained windows, which, all through the miry year, are 
pilloried out of recognition in Gray’s Inn Lane. Then, 
shall a squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump 
in it, lying between the coffee-house and South Square, 
be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have 
its empire divided between those animals and a few brief- 
less bipeds — surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiv- 
ing spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no mortal 
— who glance down, with eyes better glazed than their 
casements, from their dreary and lacklustre rooms. Then 
shall the way Nor’ Westward, now lying under a short 
grim colonnade where in summer time pounce flies from 
law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen, be 
choked with rubbish and happily become impassable. 
Theh shall the gardens where turf, trees, and gravel 
wear a legal livery of black, run rank, and pilgrims go 
to Gorhambury to see Bacons effigy as he sat, and not 
come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see where 
he walked. Then, in a word, shall the old-established 
vender of periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop 
behind the Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius 
among the ruins of Carthage, who has sat heavy on a 
thousand million of similes. 

At one period of my uncommercial career I much fre- 


PARKLE’S SET. 


199 


quented another set of chambers in Gray’s Inn Square. 
They were what is familiarly called “ a top set,” and all 
the eatables and drinkables introduced into them acquired 
a flavor of Cockloft. I have known an unopened Stras- 
bourg pate fresh from Fortnum and Mason’s, to draw in 
this cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become 
penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle^ 
in three-quarters of an hour. This, however, was not the 
most curious feature of those chambers ; that, consisted 
in the profound conviction entertained by my esteemed 
friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. 
Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it 
was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I 
never could ascertain. But, I believe he would have 
gone to the stake upon the question. Now, they were 
so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression 
of my figure on any article of furniture by merely loung- 
ing upon it for a few moments ; and it used to be a pri- 
vate amusement of mine to print myself off — if I may 
use the expression — all over the rooms. It was the first 
large circulation I had. At other times I have acciden- 
tally shaken a window-curtain while in animated conver- 
sation with Parkle, and struggling insects which were 
certainly red, and were certainly not lady -birds, have 
dropped on the back of my hand. Yet 'Parkle lived in 
that top set years, bound body and soul to the sujflrsti- 
tion that they were clean. He used to say, when congrat- 
ulated upon them, “ Well, they are not like chambers in 
one respect, you know ; they are clean.” Concurrently, 
he had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. 
Miggot was in some way connected with the Church. 
When he was in particularly good spirits, he used to 
believe that a deceased uncle of hers had been a Dean ; 


200 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


when he was poorly and low, he believed that her brother 
had been a Curate. I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel 
woman) were on confidential terms, but I never knew 
her to commit herself to any distinct assertion on the sub- 
ject ; she merely claimed a proprietorship in the Church, 
by looking when it was mentioned, as if the reference 
awakened the slumbering Past, and were personal. It 
may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs. Miggot’s 
better days that inspired my friend with his delusion 
respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his 
fidelity to it for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt 
seven years. 

Two of the windows of these chambers looked down 
into the garden ; and we have sat up there together, 
many a summer evening, saying how pleasant it was, and 
talking of many things. To my intimacy with that top 
set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal im- 
pressions of the loneliness of life in chambers. They 
shall follow here, in order ; first, second, and third. 

First. My Gray’s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of 
his legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not knowing 
of his indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as 
usual, one summer evening, when I was much surprised 
by meeting a lively leech in Field Court, Gray’s Inn, 
seemingly on his way to the West End of London. As 
the feecli was alone, and was of course unable to explain 
his position, even if he had been inclined to do so (which 
he had not the appearance of being), I passed him and 
went on. Turning the corner of Gray’s Inn Square, I 
was beyond expression amazed by meeting another leech 
— also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a westerly 
direction, though with less decision of purpose. Rumi- 
nating on this extraordinary circumstance, and endeav- 


PARKLE’S OPPOSITE NEIGHBOR. 


201 


oring to remember whether I had ever read, in the 
Philosophical Transactions or any work on Natural His- 
tory, of a migration of Leeches, I ascended to the top set, 
past the dreary series of closed outer doors of offices and 
an empty set or two, which intervened between that 
lofty region and the surface. Entering my friend’s rooms, 
I found him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus 
Bound, with a perfectly demented ticket-porter in attend- 
ance on him instead of the Vulture : which helpless in- 
dividual, who was feeble and frightened, had (my friend 
explained to me, in great choler) been endeavoring for 
some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had 
only got on two out of twenty. To this Unfortunate’s 
distraction between a damp cloth on which he had 
placed the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful 
adjurations of my friend to “ Stick ’em on, sir ! ” I re- 
ferred the phenomenon I had encountered : the rather 
as two fine specimens were at that moment going out 
at the door, while a general insurrection of the rest was 
in progress on the table. After a while our united ef- 
forts prevailed, and, when the leeches came off and had 
recovered their spirits, we carefully tied them up in a de- 
canter. But I never heard more of them than that they 
were all gone next morning, and that the Out-of-door 
young man of Bickle Bush and Bodger, on the ground 
floor, had been bitten and blooded by some creature not 
identified. They never “ took ” on Mrs. Miggot, the 
laundress; but I have always preserved fresh the be- 
lief that she unconsciously carried several about her, 
until they gradually found openings in life. 

Second. On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, 
and on the same floor, there lived a man of law who pur- 
sued his business elsewhere, and used those chambers as 


202 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


his place of residence. For three or four years, Parkle 
rather knew of him than knew him, but after that — for 
Englishmen — short pause of consideration, they began 
to speak. Parkle exchanged words with him in his pri- 
vate character only, and knew nothing of his business 
ways, or means. He was a man a good deal about town, 
but always alone. We used to remark to one another 
that although we often encountered him in theatres, con- 
cert-rooms, and similar public places, he was always 
alone. Yet he was not a gloomy man, and was of a 
decidedly conversational turn ; insomuch that he would 
sometimes of an evening lounge with a cigar in his 
mouth, half in and half out of Parkle’s rooms, and dis- 
cuss the topics of the day by the hour. He used to hint 
on these occasions that he had four faults to find with 
life : firstly, that it obliged a man to be always winding 
up his watch ; secondly, that London was too small ; 
thirdly, that it therefore wanted variety ; fourthly, that 
there was too much dust in it. There was so much dust 
in his own faded chambers, certainly, that they remind- 
ed me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic anticipa- 
tion of the present time, which had newly been brought 
to light, after having lain buried a few thousand years. 
One dry hot autumn evening at twilight, this man, being 
then five years turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in 
his usual lounging way, with his cigar in his mouth as 
usual, and said, “ I am going out of town.” As he never 
went out of town, Parkle said, “ Oh indeed ! At last ? ” 
u Yes,” says he, “ at last. For what is a man to do ? 
London is so small ! If you go West, you come to 
Hounslow. If you go East, you come to Bow. If you 
go South, there ’s Brixton or Norwood. If you go North, , 
you can’t get rid of Barnet. Then, the monotony of all 


ELDERLY TEMPLAR. 


203 


the streets, streets, streets — and of all the roads, roads, 
roads — and the dust, dust, dust ! ” When he had said 
this, he wished Parkle a good evening, but came back 
again and said, with his ’watch in his hand, “ Oh, I really 
cannot go on winding up this watch over and over again ; 
I wish you would take care of it.” So, Parkle laughed 
and consented, and the man w r ent out of town. The man 
remained out of town so long, that his letter-box became 
choked, and no more letters could be got into it, and 
they began to be left at the lodge and to accumulate 
there. At last the head-porter decided, on conference 
with the steward, to use his master-key and look into the 
chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff of air. 
Then, it was found that he had hanged himself to his 
bedstead, and had left this written memorandum : “ I 

should prefer to be cut down by my neighbor and friend 
(if he will allow me to call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.” 
This was the end of Parkle’s occupancy of chambers. 
He went into lodgings immediately. 

Third. While Parkle lived in Gray’s Inn, and I 
myself was uncommercially preparing for the Bar — 
which is done, as everybody knows, by having a frayed 
old gowm put on in a pantry by an old woman in a 
chronic state of Saint Anthony’s fire and dropsy, and, 
so decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, 
whereof each individual mistrusts the other three — I 
say, while these things were, there was a certain elderly 
gentleman who lived in a court of the Temple, and was 
a great judge and lover of port wine. Every day, he 
dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port 
wine, and every night came home to the Temple and 
went to bed in his lonely chambers. This had gone on 
many years without variation, when one night he had a 


204 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


fit on coming home, and fell and cut his head deep, but 
partly recovered and groped about in the dark to find the 
door. When he was afterwards discovered, dead, it was 
clearly established by the marks of his hands about the 
room that he must have done so. Now, this chanced on 
the night of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young 
fellow who had sisters and young country-friends, and 
who gave them a little party that night, in the course of 
which they played at Blindman’s Buff. They played that 
game, for their greater sport, by the light of the fire only ; 
and once when they were all quietly rustling and steal- 
ing about, and the blindman was trying to pick out the 
prettiest sister (for which I am far from blaming him), 
somebody cried, Hark ! The man below must be playing 
Blindinan’s Buff by himself to-night ! They listened, 
and they heard sounds of some one falling about and 
stumbling against furniture, and they all laughed at the 
conceit, and went on with their play, more light-hearted 
and merry than ever. Thus, those two so different games 
of life and death were played out together, blindfold, in 
the two sets of chambers. 

Such are the occurrences which, coming to my knowl- 
edge, imbued me long ago with a strong sense of the 
loneliness of chambers. There was a fantastic illustra- 
tion to much the same purpose implicitly believed by a 
strange sort of a man now dead, whom I knew when I 
had not quite arrived at legal years of discretion, though 
I was already in the uncommercial line. 

This was a man who, though not more than thirty, 
had seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities — 
had been an officer in a South American regiment among 
other odd things — but had not achieved much in any 
way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding. He occu- 


MR. TESTATOR’S SET. 


205 


pied chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn ; his 
name, however, was not upon the door, or door-post, but 
in lieu of it stood the name of a friend who had died in 
the chambers, and had given him the furniture. The 
story arose out of the furniture, and was to this effect : 
— Let the former holder of the chambers, whose name 
was still upon the door and door-post, be Mr. Testator. 

Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn 
when he had but very scanty furniture for his bedroom, 
and none for his sitting-room. He had lived some wintry 
months in this condition, and had found it very bare and 
cold. One night, past midnight, when he sat writing 
and still had writing to do that must be done before he 
went to bed, he found himself out of coals. He had 
coals down-stairs, but had never been to his cellar ; how- 
ever, the cellar-key was on his mantel-shelf, and if he 
went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly 
assume the coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laun- 
dress, she lived among the coal-wagons and Thames 
watermen — for there were Thames watermen at that 
time — in some unknown rat-hole by the river, down 
lanes and alleys on the other side of the Strand. As 
to any other person to meet him or obstruct him, Lyons 
Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, betting, brood- 
ing over bill-discounting or renewing — asleep or awake, 
minding its own affairs. Mr. Testator took his coal- 
scuttle in one hand, his candle and key in the other, 
and descended to the dismallest underground dens of 
Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets be- 
came thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the neigh- 
borhood seemed to have Macbeth’s Amen sticking in 
their throats, and to be trying to get it out. After grop- 
ing here and there among low doors to no purpose, Mr. 


206 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


Testator at length came to a door with a rusty padlock 
which his key fitted. Getting the door open with much 
trouble, and looking in, he found no coals, but a confused 
pile of furniture. Alarmed by this intrusion on another 
man’s property, he locked the door again, found his own 
cellar, filled his scuttle, and returned up-stairs. 

But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across 
and across Mr. Testator’s mind incessantly, when, in the 
chill hour of five in the morning he got to bed. He par- 
ticularly wanted a table to write at, and a table expressly 
made to be written at, had been the piece of furniture in 
the foreground of the heap. When his laundress emerged 
from her burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, 
he artfully led up to the subject of cellars and furniture ; 
but the two ideas had evidently no connection in her 
mind. When she left him, and he sat at his breakfast, 
thinking about the furniture, he recalled the rusty state 
of the padlock, and inferred that the furniture must have 
been stored in the cellars for a long time — was perhaps 
forgotten — owner dead, perhaps ? After thinking it over, 
a few days, in the course of which he could pump noth- 
ing out of Lyons Inn about the furniture, he became des- 
perate, and resolved to borrow that table. He did so, 
that night. He had not had the table long, when he de- 
termined to borrow an easy-chair ; he had not had that 
long, when he made up his mind to borrow a bookcase ; 
then, a couch ; then, a carpet and rug. By that time, 
he felt he was “in .furniture stepped in so far,” as that it 
could be no worse to borrow it all. Consequently, he 
borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for good. He 
had always locked it, after every visit. He had carried 
up every separate article in the dead of the night, and, 
at the best, had felt as wicked as a Resurrection Man. 


MR. TESTATOR’S VISITOR. 


207 


Every article was blue and furry when brought into his 
rooms, and he had had, in a murderous and guilty sort 
of way, to polish it up while London slept. 

Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or 
three years, or more, and gradually lulled himself into 
the opinion that the furniture was his own. This was 
his convenient state of mind when, late one night, a step 
came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door feel- 
ing for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap 
was rapped that might have been a spring in Mr. Testa- 
tor’s easy-chair to shoot him out of it, so promptly was 
it attended with that effect. 

With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the 
door, and found there, a very pale and very tall man ; a 
man who stooped ; a man with very high shoulders, a 
very narrow chest, and a very red nose ; a shabby-gen- 
teel man. He was wrapped in a long threadbare black 
coat, fastened up the front with more pi n^ than buttons, 
and under his arm he squeezed an umbrella without 
a handle, as if he were playing bagpipes. He said, 

“ I ask your pardon, but can you tell me ” and 

stopped; his eyes resting on some object within the 
chambers. 

“ Can I tell you what ? ” asked Mr. Testator, noting 
this stoppage with quick alarm. 

“ I ask your pardon,” said the stranger, “ but — this 
is not the inquiry I was going to make — do I see in 
there any small article of property belonging to me ? ” 

Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was 
not aware — when the visitor slipped past him, into the 
chambers. There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. 
Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the writing- 
table, and said, “ Mine ; ” then, the easy-chair, and said, 


208 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ Mine ; ” then, the bookcase, and said, “ Mine ; ” then, 
turned up a corner of the carpet, and said, “ Mine ! ” in 
a word, inspected every item of furniture from the cellar, 
in succession, and said, “ Mine ! ” Towards the end of 
this investigation, Mr. Testator perceived that he was 
sodden with liquor, and that the liquor was gin. He 
was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech or car- 
riage ; but he was stiff with gin in both particulars. 

Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according 
to his making out of the story) the possible consequences 
of what he had done in recklessness and hardihood, 
flashed upon him in their fulness for the first time. 
When they had stood gazing at one another for a little 
while, he tremulously began : 

“ Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, com- 
pensation, and restitution, are your due. They shall be 
yours. Allow me to entreat that, without temper, with- 
out even natural irritation on your part, we may have a 
little ” 

“ Drop of something to drink,” interposed the stranger. 
u I am agreeable.” 

Mr. Testator had intended to say, “ a little quiet con- 
versation,” but with great relief of mind adopted the 
amendment. He produced a decanter of gin, and was 
bustling about for hot water and sugar, when he found 
that his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter’s 
contents. With hot water and sugar the visitor drank 
the remainder before he had been an hour in the cham- 
bers by the chimes of the church of St. Mary in the 
Strand ; and during the process he frequently whispered 
to himself, “ Mine ! ” 

The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was 
to follow it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiff- 


CHAMBERS IN GENERAL. 


209 


ness, “ At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be con- 
venient ? ” Mr. Testator hazarded, “ At ten ? ” “ Sir,” 

said the visitor, “ at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.” 
He then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, 
and said, “ God bless you ! How is your wife ? ” Mr. 
Testator (who never had a wife) replied with much feel- 
ing, “ Deeply anxious, poor soul, but otherwise well.” 
The visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell 
twice in going down-stairs. From that hour he was 
never heard of. Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral 
illusion of conscience, or a drunken man who had no 
business there, or the drunken rightful owner of the fur- 
niture, with a transitory gleam of memory ; whether he 
got safe home, or had no home to get to ; whether he 
died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever after- y 
wards ; he never was heard of more. This was the story 
received with the furniture and held to be as substantial, 
by its second possessor in an upper set of chambers in 
grim Lyons Inn. 

It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they 
must have been built for chambers, to have the right 
kind of loneliness. You may make a great dwelling- 
house very lonely, by isolating suites of rooms and call- 
ing them chambers, but you cannot make the true kind 
of loneliness. In dwelling-houses, there have been fam- 
ily festivals ; children have grown in them, girls have 
bloomed into women in them, courtships and marriages 
have taken place in them. True chambers never were 
young, childish, maidenly ; never had dolls in them, or 
rocking-horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or little 
coffins. Let Gray’s Inn identify the child who first 
touched hands and hearts with Robinson Crusoe, in any 
one of its many “ sets,” and that child’s little statue, in 
14 


210 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


white marble with a golden inscription, shall be at its 
service, at my cost and charge, as a drinking fountain 
for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty square. Let Lincoln’s 
produce from all its houses, a twentieth of the procession 
derivable from any dwelling-house one twentieth of its 
age, of fair young brides who married for love and hope, 
not settlements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thence- 
forward be kept in nosegays for nothing, on application to 
the writer hereof. It is not denied that on the terrace 
of the Adelphi, or in any of the streets of that sub- 
terranean stable-haunted spot, or about Bedford Row, or 
James Street of that ilk (a grewsome place), or anywhere 
among the neighborhoods that have done flowering and 
have run to seed, you may find Chambers replete with 
the accommodations of Solitude, Closeness, and Dark- 
ness, where you may be as low-spirited as in the genuine 
article, and might be as easily murdered, with the placid 
reputation of having merely gone down to the sea-side. 
But the many waters of life did run musical in those 
dry channels once ; — among the Inns, never. The only 
popular legend known in relation to any one of the dull 
family of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning 
Clement’s, and importing how the black creature who 
holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who slew his mas- 
ter and built the dismal pile out of the contents of his 
strong-box — for which architectural offence alone he 
ought to have been condemned to live in it. But what 
populace would waste fancy upon such a place, or on 
New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard’s Inn, or any of the shab- 
by crew ? 

The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be 
had in its entirety out of and away from the genuine 
Chambers. Again, it is not denied that you may be 


MRS. SWEENEY. 


211 


robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere you may have — for 
money — dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and 
profound incapacity. But the veritable shining-red- 
faced, shameless laundress ; the true Mrs. Sweeney — 
in figure, color, texture, and smell, like the old damp 
family umbi’ella ; the tip-top complicated abomination of 
stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and lar- 
ceny ; is only to be drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs. 
Sweeney is beyond the reach of individual art. It 
requires the united efforts of several men to insure that 
great result, and it is only developed in perfection under 
an Honorable Society and in an Inn of Court. 


212 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


XV. 

nurse’s stories. 

There are not many places that I find it more agree- 
able to revisit when I am in an idle mood, than some 
places to which I have never been. For my acquaint- 
ance with those spots is of such long standing, and has 
ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that 
I take a particular interest in assuring myself that they 
are unchanged. 

I never was in Robinson Crusoe’s Island, yet I fre- 
quently return there. The colony he established on it 
soon faded away, and it is uninhabited by any descend- 
ants of the grave and courteous Spaniards, or of Will 
Atkins and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into 
its original condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses 
remains, its goats have long run wild again, its scream- 
ing parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many 
flaming colors if a gun were fired there, no face is ever 
reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday 
swam across when pursued by his two brother cannibals 
with sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes with 
other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island 
and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself 
that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins’s domesticity or 
theology, though his track on the memorable evening of 
his landing to set his captain ashore, when he was de- 
coyed about and round about until it was dark, and his 


WHERE I NEVER WAS, BUT OFTEN AM. 213 


boat was stove, and bis strength and spirits failed him, 
is yet plainly to be traced. So is the hill-top on which 
Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated 
captain pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile 
of the shore, that was to bear him away, in the nine- 
and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that lonely place. 
So is the sandy beach on which the memorable footstep 
was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their 
canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public 
dinners, which led to a dancing worse than speech-mak- 
ing. So is the cave where the flaring eyes of the old 
goat made such a goblin appearance in the dark. So is 
the site of the hut where Robinson lived with the dog 
and the parrot and the cat, and where he endured those 
first agonies of solitude, which — strange to say — never 
involved any ghostly fancies ; a circumstance so very 
remarkable, that perhaps he left out something in writ- 
ing his record? Round hundreds of such objects, hidden 
in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks ever- 
more ; and over them the tropical sky, saving in the 
short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless. 

Neither was I ever belated among wolves, on the 
borders of France and Spain; nor did I ever, when 
night was closing in and the ground was covered with 
snow, draw up my little company among some felled 
trees which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train 
of gunpowder so dexterously that suddenly we had three 
or four score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness 
around us. Nevertheless, I occasionally go back to that 
dismal region and perform the feat again ; when indeed 
to smell the singeing and the frying of the wolves <afire, 
and to see them setting one another alight as they rush 
and tumble, and to behold them rolling in the snow 


214 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to hear their 
howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all 
the unseen wolves within the woods, makes me tremble. 

I was never in the robbers’ cave, where Gil Bias lived, 
but I often go back there and find the trap-door just as 
heavy to raise as it used to be, while that wicked old 
disabled Black lies everlastingly cursing in bed. I was 
never in Don Quixote’s study where he read his books of 
chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants, 
and then refreshed himself with great draughts of water, 
yet you could n’t move a book in it without my knowl- 
edge, or with my consent. I was never (thank Heaven) 
in company with the little old woman who hobbled out of 
the chest and told the merchant Abudah to go in search 
of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I made it my business 
to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as 
ever. I was never at the school where the boy Horatio 
Nelson got out of bed to steal the pears : not because he 
wanted any, but because every other boy was afraid : 
yet I have several times been back to this Academy, to 
see him let down out of window with a sheet. So with 
Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobdingnag (which has 
the curious fate of being usually misspelt when written), 
and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and Abyssinia, 
and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds 
of places — I was never at them, yet it is an affair of 
my life to keep them intact, and I am always going back 
to them. 

But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting 
the associations of my childhood as recorded in previous 
pageS of these notes, my experience in this wise was 
made quite inconsiderable and of no account, by the quan- 
tity of places and people — utterly impossible places and 


CAPTAIN MURDERER. 


215 


people, but none the less alarmingly real — that I found 
I had been introduced to by my nurse before I was six 
years old, and used to be forced to go back to at night 
without at all wanting to go. If we all knew our own 
minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular accep- 
tation of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses 
responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced to 
go back to, against our wills. 

The first diabolical character who intruded himself on 
my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dull- 
borough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch 
must have been an offshoot of the Blue Beard family, but 
I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. 
His warning name would seem to have awakened no 
general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into 
the best society and possessed immense wealth. Captain 
Murderer’s mission was matrimony, and the gratification 
of a cannibal appetite with tender brides. On his mar- 
riage morning, he always caused both sides of the way 
to church to be planted with curious flowers ; and when 
his bride said, “ Dear Captain Murderer, I never saw 
flowers like these before : what are they called ? ” he an- 
swered, “ They are called Garnish for house-lamb, and 
laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid man- 
ner, disquieting the minds of the noble bridal company, 
with a very sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the 
first time. He made love in a coach and six, and mar- 
ried in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk- 
white horses with one red spot on the back, which he 
caused to be hidden by the harness. For, the spot would 
come there, though every horse was milk - white when 
Captain Murderer bought him. And the spot was young 
bride’s blood. (To this terrific point I am indebted for 


216 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


my first personal experience of a shudder and cold bead9 
on the forehead.) When Captain Murderer had made an 
end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed the noble 
guests, and was alone with his wife on the day month 
after their marriage, it was his whimsical custom to pro- 
duce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board. Now, 
there was this special feature in the Captain’s courtships, 
that he always asked if the young lady could make pie- 
crust ; and if she could n’t by nature or education, she was 
taught. W 7 ell. When the bride saw Captain Murderer 
produce the golden rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she 
remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk sleeves to 
make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish 
of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour 
and butter and eggs and all things needful, except the 
inside of the pie ; of materials for the staple of the pie 
itself, the Captain brought out none. Then said the 
lovely bride, “ Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is this 
to be ? ” He replied, “A meat pie.” Then said the lovely 
bride, “ Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.” The 
Captain humorously retorted, “ Look in the glass.” She 
looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then 
the Captain roared with laughter, and, suddenly frowning 
and drawing his sword, bade her roll out the crust. So 
she rolled out the crust, dropping large tears upon it all 
the time because he was so cross, and when she had lined 
the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit 
the top, the Captain called out, “/ see the meat in the 
glass ! ” And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time 
to see the Captain cutting her head off ; and he chopped 
her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put 
her in the pie, and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, 
and picked the bones. 


THE DARK TWIN. 


217 


Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering 
exceedingly, until he came to choose a bride from two 
twin sisters, and at first did n’t know which to choose. 
For, though one was fair and the other dark, they were 
both equally beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, and 
the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one. The 
dark twin would have prevented the marriage if she 
could, but she could n’t ; however, on the night before it, 
much suspecting Captain Murderer, she stole out and 
climbed his garden-wall, and looked in at his window 
through a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his 
teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all day, and 
heard him make his joke about the house-lamb. And 
that day month, he had the paste rolled out, and cut the 
fair twin’s head off, and chopped her in pieces, and pep- 
pered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and 
sent it to the baker s, and ate it all, and picked the bones. 

Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much in- 
creased by the filing of the Captain’s teeth, and again by 
the house-lamb joke. Putting all things together when 
he gave out that her sister was dead, she divined the 
truth, and determined to be revenged. So, she went up 
to Captain Murderer’s house, and knocked at the knocker 
and pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the 
door, said : “ Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for 
I always loved you and was jealous of my sister.” The 
Captain took it as a compliment, and made a polite an- 
swer, and the marriage was quickly arranged. On the 
night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, 
and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this 
sight, she laughed such a terrible laugh, at the chink in 
the shutter, that the Captain’s blood curdled, and he said : 
r< I hope nothing has disagreed with me ! ” At that, she 


218 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


laughed again, a still more terrible laugh, and the shutter 
was opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone, 
and there was no one. Next day they went to church in 
the coach and twelve, and were married. And that day 
month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Mur- 
derer cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and 
peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and 
sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the bones. 

But before she began to roll out the paste she had 
taken a deadly poison of a most awful character, dis- 
tilled from toads’ eyes and spiders’ knees ; and Captain 
Murderer had hardly picked her last bone, when he be- 
gan to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, 
and to scream. And he went on swelling and turning 
bluer and being more all over spots and screaming, until 
he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall ; 
and then, at one o’clock in the morning, he blew up with 
a loud explosion. At the sound of it, all the milk-white 
horses in the stables broke their halters and went mad, 
and then they galloped over everybody in Captain Mur- 
derer’s house (beginning with the family blacksmith who 
had filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then 
they galloped away. 

Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain 
Murderer, in my early youth, and added hundreds of 
times was there a mental compulsion upon me in bed, to 
peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and to 
revisit his horrible house, and look at him in his blue 
and spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from floor 
to ceiling and from wall to wall. The young woman 
who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer, had 
a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, 
I remember, — as a sort of introductory overture, — by 


CHIPS THE SHIPWRIGHT. 


219 


clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low 
hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this cere- 
mony in combination with this infernal Captain, that I 
sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong 
enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. 
But, she never spared me one word of it, and indeed 
commended the awful chalice to my lips as the only pre- 
servative known to science against “ The Black Cat ” — 
a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who was 
reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the 
breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a special 
thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine. 

This female bard — may she have been repaid my 

debt of obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and 
© © 

perspirations ! — reappears in my memory as the daugh- 
ter of a shipwright. Her name was Mercy, though she 
had none on me. There was something of a ship-build- 
ing flavor in the following story. As it always recurs 
to me in a vague association with calomel pills, I believe 
it to have been reserved for dull nights when I was low 
with medicine. 

There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a 
Government Yard, and his name was Chips. And his 
father’s name before him was Chips, and his father’s 
name before him was Chips, and they were all Chipses. 
And Chips the father had sold himself to the Devil for 
an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a 
ton of copper and a rat that could speak ; and Chips 
the grandfather had sold himself to the Devil for an iron 
pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of cop- 
per and a rat that could speak ; and Chips the great 
grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direc- 
tion on the same terms ; and the bargain had run in the 


220 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


family for a long long time. So, one day when young 
Chips was at work in the Dock Slip all alone, down in 
the dark hold of an old Seventy-four that was haled up 
for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and remarked : 

“ A Lemon has pips, 

And a Yard has ships, 

And I ’ll have Chips ! ” 

(I don’t know why, but this fact of the Devil’s express- 
ing himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me. 
Chips looked up when he heard the words, and there he 
saw the Devil with saucer eyes that squinted on a terri- 
ble great scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire 
continually. And whenever he winked his eyes, showers 
of blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes made a clat- 
tering like flints and steels striking lights. And hang- 
ing over one of his arms by the handle was an iron pot, 
and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and 
under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sit- 
ting on one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak. 
So, the Devil said again : 

“ A Lemon has pips, 

And a Yard has ships, 

And / ’ll have Chips! ” 

(The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the 
part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses 
for some moments.) So, Chips answered never a word, 
but went on with his work. “ What are you doing, 
Chips ? ” said the rat that could speak. “ I am putting 
in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old 
away,” said Chips. “ But we ’ll eat them too,” said the 
rat that could speak ; “ and we ’ll let in the water and 
drown the crew, and we ’ll eat them too.” Chips, being 
only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war’s man, said, 


CHIPS’S BARGAIN. 


221 


“You are welcome to it.” But he couldn’t keep his 
eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of ten- 
penny nails ; for nails and copper are a shipwright’s 
sweethearts, and shipwrights will run away with them 
whenever they can. So, the Devil said, “I see what 
you are looking at, Chips. You had better strike the 
bargain. You know the terms. Your father before you 
was well acquainted with them, and so were your grand- 
father and great-grandfather before him.” Says Chips, 
“ I like the copper, and I like the nails, and I don’t mind 
the pot, but I don’t like the rat.” Says the Devil, fierce- 
ly, “ You can’t have the metal without him — and he ’s a 
curiosity. I ’m going.” Chips, afraid of losing the half 
a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, “ Give 
us hold ! ” So, he got the copper and the nails and the 
pot and the rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished. 
Chips sold the copper, and he sold the nails, and he 
would have sold the pot ; but whenever he offered it for 
sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped it, and 
would have nothing to say to the bargain. So, Chips 
resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard 
one day with a great kettle of hot pitch on one side of 
him and the iron pot with the rat in it on the other, he 
turned the scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it full. 
Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, 
and then he let it stand for twenty days, and then he 
heated the pitch again and turned it back into the kettle, 
and then he sank the pot in water for twenty days more, 
and then he got the smelters to put it in the furnace for 
twenty days more, and then they gave it him out, red 
hot, and looked like red-hot glass instead of iron — yet 
there was a rat in it, just the same as ever ! And 
the moment it caught his eye, it said with a jeer : 


222 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


“ A Lemon has pips, 

And a Yard has ships, 

And I ’ll have Chips 1 ” 

(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, 
with inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips 
now felt certain in his own mind that the rat would stick 
to him ; the rat, answering his thought, said, “ I will — 
like pitch ! ” 

Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had 
spoken, and made off, Chips began to hope that it 
would n’t keep its word. But, a terrible thing happened 
next day. For, when dinner-time came and the Dock- 
bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long 
pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a 
rat — not that rat, but another rat. And in his hat, he 
found another ; and in his pocket-handkerchief, another ; 
and in the sleeves of his coat, when he pulled it on to go 
to dinner, two more. And from that time he found him- 
self so frightfully intimate with all the rats in the Yard, 
that they climbed up his legs when he was at work, and 
sat on his tools while he used them. And they could all 
speak to one another, and he understood what they said. 
And they got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into 
his teapot, and into his beer, and into his boots. And he 
was going to be married to a corn-chandler’s daughter ; 
and when he gave her a work-box he had himself made 
for her, a rat jumped out of it ; and when he put his arm 
round her waist, a rat clung about her ; so the marriage 
was broken off, though the banns were already twice put 
up — which the parish clerk well remembers, for, as he 
handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of 
asking, a large fat rat ran over the leaf. ( By this time 
a special cascade of rats was rolling down my back, and 


CHIPS AND THE RATS. 


223 


the whole of my small listening person*was overrun with 
them. At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly 
afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should 
find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.) 

You may believe that all this was very terrible to 
Chips ; but even all this was not the worst. He knew 
besides, what the rats were doing, wherever they were. 
So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when he was at his 
club at night, “ Oh ! Keep the rats out of the convicts’ 
burying-ground ! Don’t let them do that ! ” Or “ There ’s 
one of them at the cheese down-stairs ! ” Or, “ There ’s 
two of them smelling at the baby in the garret ! ” Or, 
other things of that sort. At last, he was voted mad, 
and lost his work in the Yard, and could get no other 
work. But, King George wanted men, so before very 
long he got pressed for a sailor. And so he was taken 
off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, 
ready to sail. And so the first thing he made out in her 
as he got near her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy- 
four, where he had seen the Devil. She was called the 
Argonaut, and they rowed right under the bowsprit where 
the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a sheepskin in his 
hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea ; and 
sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could 
speak, and his exact words were these : “ Chips ahoy ! 
Old boy! We’ve pretty well eat them too, and we’ll 
drown the crew, and will eat them too ! ” (Here I al- 
ways became exceedingly faint, and would have asked 
for water, but that I was speechless.) 

The ship was bound for the Indies ; and if you don’t 
know where that is, you ought to it, and angels will 
never love you. (Here I felt myself an outcast from a 
future state.) The ship set sail that very night, and she 


224 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


sailed, and sailed, and sailed. Chips’s feelings were 
dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No wonder. 
At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral. 
The Admiral giv’ leave. Chips went down on his knees 
in the Great State Cabin. “ Your Honor, unless your 
Honor, without a moment’s loss of time makes sail for 
the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship, and her name is 
the Coffin ! ” “ Young man, your words are a madman’s 

words.” “ Your Honor no ; they are nibbling us away.” 
“ They ? ” “ Your Honor, them dreadful rats. Dust 

and hollowness where solid oak ought to be ! Rats nib- 
bling a grave for every man on board ! Oh ! Does 
your Honor love your Lady and your pretty children ? ” 
“Yes, my man, to be sure.” “Then, for God’s sake, 
make for the nearest shore, for at this present moment 
the rats are all stopping in their work, and are all look- 
ing straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all 
saying to one another that you shall never, never, never, 
never, see your Lady and your children more.” “ My 
poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. Sentry, take 
care o£ this man ! ” 

So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this 
and that, for six whole days and nights. So, then he 
again asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admi- 
ral giv’ leave. He w r ent down on his knees in the Great 
State Cabin. “ Now, Admiral, you must die ! You took 
no warning ; you must die ! The rats are never wrong 
in their calculations, and they make out that they ’ll be 
through, at twelve to-night. So, you must die ! — With 
me and all the rest ! ” And so at twelve o’clock there 
was a great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of 
water rushed in and nothing could stop it, and they all 
went down, every living soul. And what the rats — • 


MY FEMALE BARD’S PRETENCE. 


225 


being water-rats — left of Chips, at last floated to shore, 
and sitting on him was an immense overgrown rat, laugh- 
ing, that dived when the corpse touched the beach and 
never came up. And there was a deal of seaweed on the 
remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and 
dry them and bum them in the fire, they will go off like 
in these thirteen words as plain as plain can be : 

“ A Lemon has pips, 

And a Yard has ships, 

And I We got Chips! ” 

The same female bard — descended, possibly, from 
those terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the 
express purpose of addling the brains of mankind when 
e they begin to investigate languages — made a standing 
pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a 
number of hideous places that I would by all means 
have avoided. This pretence was, that all her ghost 
stories had occurred to her own relations. Politeness 
towards a meritorious family, therefore forbade my 
doubting them, and they acquired an air of authentica- 
tion that impaired my digestive powers for life. There 
was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal forebod- 
ing death, which appeared in the open street to a parlor- 
maid who “ went to fetch the beer ” for supper ; first (as 
I now recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and 
gradually rising on its hind-legs and swelling into the 
semblance of some quadruped greatly surpassing a hip- 
popotamus : which apparition — not because I deemed 
it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be 
really too large to bear — I feebly endeavored to explain 
away. But, on Mercy’s retorting with wounded dignity 
that the parlor-maid was her own sister-in-law, I per- 
ceived there was no hope, and resigned myself to this 
15 


226 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers. 
There was another narrative describing the apparition 
of a young woman who came out of a glass-case and 
haunted another young woman until the other young 
woman questioned it and elicited that its bones (Lord ! 
To think of its being so particular about its bones !) 
were buried under the glass-case, whereas she required 
them to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity 
up to twenty-four pound ten, in another particular place. 
This narrative I considered I had a personal interest in 
disproving, because we had glass-cases at home, and how, 
otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of 
young women requiring me to bury them up to twenty- 
four pound ten, when I had only twopence a week ? 
But my remorseless nurse cut the ground from under 
my tender feet, by informing me that She was the other 
young woman; and I couldn’t say “I don’t believe 
you ; ” it was not possible. 

Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I 
was forced to make, against my will, when I was very 
young and unreasoning. And really, as to the latter 
part of them, it is not so very long ago — now I come to 
think of it — that I was asked to undertake them once 
again, with a steady countenance. 


THE HATTER’S. 


227 


XYI. 

ARCADIAN LONDON. 

Being in a humor for complete solitude and uninter- 
rupted meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging 
for six weeks in the most unfrequented part of England 
— in a word, in London. 

The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is 
Bond Street. From this lonely spotT make pilgrimages 
into the surrounding wilderness, and traverse extensive 
tracts of the Great Desert. The first solemn feeling of 
isolation overcome, the first oppressive consciousness of 
profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of 
freedom, and feel reviving within me that latent wild- 
ness of the original savage, which has been (upon the 
whole somewhat frequently) noticed by Travellers. 

My lodgings are at a hatter’s — my own hatter’s. 
After exhibiting no articles in his window for some 
weeks, but seaside wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a 
choice of rough waterproof head-gear for the moors and 
mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family as 
much of this stock as they could carry, and has taken 
them off to the Isle of Thanet. His young man alone 
remains — and remains alone — in the shop. The young 
man has let out the fire at which the irons are heated, 
and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no reason why 
he should take the shutters down. 

Happily for himself and for his country, the young 


228 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


man is a Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think 
he would become the prey of a settled melancholy. For, 
to live surrounded by human hats, and alienated from 
human heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance. 
But, the young man, sustained by practising his exercise, 
and by constantly furbishing up his regulation plume (it 
is unnecessary to observe that, as a hatter, he is in a 
cock’s-feather corps), is resigned, and uncomplaining. On 
a Saturday, when he closes early and gets his Knicker- 
bockers on, he is even cheerful. I am gratefully particu- 
lar in this reference to him, because he is my companion 
through many peaceful hours. My hatter has a desk up 
certain steps behind his counter, enclosed like the clerk’s 
desk at Church. I shut myself into this place of seclu- 
sion, after breakfast, and meditate. At such times, I ob- 
serve the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the 
greatest precision, and maintaining a most galling and 
destructive fire upon the national enemy. I thank him 
publicly for his companionship and his patriotism. 

The simple character of my life, and the calm nature 
of the scenes by which I am surrounded, occasion me to 
rise early. I go forth in my slippers, and promenade 
the pavement. It is pastoral to feel the freshness of the 
air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate the shep- 
herdess character of the few milk-women who purvey so 
little milk that it would be worth nobody’s while to adul- 
terate it, if anybody were left to undertake the task. 
On the crowded sea-shore, the great demand for milk, 
combined with the strong local temptation of chalk, would 
betray itself in the lowered quality of the article. In 
Arcadian London, I derive it from the cow. 

The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, 
and the primitive ways into which it has fallen in this 


MY FRIEND’S BUTLER. 


229 


autumnal Golden Age, make it entirely new to me. 
"Within a few hundred yards of my retreat, is the house 
of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous butler. I 
never, until yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine 
black broadcloth. Until yesterday, I never saw him off 
duty, never saw him (he is the best of butlers) with the 
appearance of having any mind for anything but the 
glory of his master and his master’s friends. Yesterday 
morning, walking in my slippers near the house of which 
he is the prop and ornament — a house now a waste of 
shutters — I encountered that butler, also in his slippers, 
and in a shooting-suit of one color, and in a low-crowned 
straw hat, smoking an early cigar. He felt that we had 
formerly met in another state of existence, and that we 
were translated into a new sphere. Wisely and well, he 
passed me without recognition. Under his arm he carried 
the morning paper, and shortly afterwards I saw him sit- 
ting on a rail in the pleasant open landscape of Regent 
Street, perusing it at his ease under the ripening sun. 

My landlord having taken his whole establishment to 
be salted down, I am waited on by an elderly woman 
laboring under a chronic sniff, who, at the shadowy 
hour of half-past nine o’clock of every evening, gives 
admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy 
old man whom I have never yet seen detached from a 
flat pint of beer in a pewter pot. The meagre and 
mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair have a de- 
jected consciousness that they are not justified in appear- 
ing on the surface of the earth. They come out of some 
hole when London empties itself, and go in again when 
it fills. I saw them arrive on the evening when I my- 
self took possession, and they arrived w T ith the flat pint 
of beer, and their bed in a bundle. The old man is a 


230 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


weak old man, and appeared to me to get the bed down 
the kitchen stairs bj tumbling down with and upon it. 
They make their bed in the lowest and remotest corner 
of the basement, and they smell of bed, and have no 
possession but bed: unless it be (which I rather infer 
from an under-current of flavor in them) cheese. I 
know their name, through the chance of having called 
the wife’s attention, at half-past nine on the second even- 
ing of our acquaintance, to the circumstance of there 
being some one at the house door ; when she apolo- 
getically explained, “ It ’s on’y Mr. Klem.” What be- 
comes of Mr. Klem all day, or when he goes out, or why, 
is a mystery I cannot penetrate ; but at half-past nine he 
never fails to turn up on the door-step with the flat pint 
of beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much 
more important than himself, that it always seems to 
my fancy as if it had found him drivelling in the street 
and had humanely brought him home. In making 
his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the middle 
of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against 
the wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is 
occupying as little space as possible in the house ; and 
whenever I come upon him face to face, he backs from 
me in fascinated confusion. The most extraordinary cir- 
cumstance I have traced in connection with this aged 
couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, ap- 
parently ten years older than either of them, who has 
also a bed and smells of it, and carries it about the earth 
at dusk and hides it in deserted houses. I came into 
this piece of knowledge through Mrs. Klem’s beseech- 
ing me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem under 
that roof for a single night, “ between her takin’ care 
of the upper part in Pall Mall which the family of 


MR. AND MRS. KLEM. 


231 


his back, and a ’ouse in Serjameses Street, which the 
family of leaves towng termorrer.” I gave my gra- 
cious consent (having nothing that I know of to do with 
it), and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became per- 
ceptible on the door-step, wrestling with a bed in a 
bundle. Where she made it up for the night I cannot 
positively state, but, I think, in a sink. I know that 
with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed it 
and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Ivlem family, 
I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and 
that is a power they possess of converting everything 
into flue. Such broken victuals as they take by stealth, 
appear (whatever the nature of the viands) invariably to 
generate flue ; and even the nightly pint of beer, instead 
of assimilating naturally, strikes me as breaking out in 
that form, equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem, 
and the threadbare coat of her husband. 

Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name — as to Mr. Klem, 
he has no idea of anything — and only knows me as her 
good gentleman. Thus, if doubtful whether I am in my 
room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, “ Is 
my good gentleman here ? ” Or, if a messenger desiring 
to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would 
show him in with “ Here is my good gentleman.’’ I 
find this to be a generic custom. For, I meant to have 
observed before now, that in its Arcadian time all my 
part of London is indistinctly pervaded by the Klem 
species. They creep about with beds, and go to bed in 
miles of deserted houses. They hold no companionship, 
except that sometimes, after dark, two of them will 
emerge from opposite houses, and meet in the middle of 
the road as on neutral ground, or will peep from adjoin- 
ing houses over an interposing barrier of area railings, 


232 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting 
their good ladies or good gentlemen. This I have dis- 
covered in the course of various solitary rambles I have 
taken Northward from my retirement, along the awful 
perspectives of Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and simi- 
lar frowning regions. Their effect would be scarcely dis- 
tinguishable from that of the primeval forests, but for 
the Klem stragglers ; ‘these may be dimly observed, when 
the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting up the 
door-chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phan- 
toms at the dark parlor windows, or secretly consorting 
underground with the dust-bin and the water-cistern. 

In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar 
pleasure, a primitive state of manners to have superseded 
the baneful influences of ultra civilization. Nothing 
can surpass the innocence of the ladies’ shoe-shops, the 
artificial flower repositories, and the head-dress depots. 
They are in strange hands at this time of year — hands 
of unaccustomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted 
with the prices of the goods, and contemplate them with 
unsophisticated delight and wonder. The children of 
these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the Ar- 
cade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles. 
Their youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner 
with the harmonious shade of the scene, and the general 
effect is, as of the voices of birds in a grove. In this 
happy restoration of the golden time, it has been my 
privilege even to see the bigger beadle’s v r ife. She 
brought him his dinner in a basin, and he ate it in his 
arm-chair, and afterwards fell asleep like a satiated child. 
At Mr. Truefitt’s the excellent hairdresser’s, they are 
learning French to beguile the time; and even the few 
solitaries left on guard at Mr. Atkinson’s, the perfumer’s 


OUT OF WORK. 


233 


round the corner (generally the most inexorable gentle- 
men in London, and the most scornful of three-and-six- 
pence), condescend a little as they drowsily bide or recall 
their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed 
sea-sand. From Messrs. Hunt and Roskell’s the jewel- 
lers, all things are absent but the precious stones, and 
the gold and silver, and the soldierly pensioner at the 
door with his decorated breast. I might stand night and 
day for a month to come, in Saville Row, with my tongue 
out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or money. 
The dentists’ instruments are rusting in their drawers, 
and their horrible cool parlors, where people pretend to 
read the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are 
doing penance for their grimness in white sheets. The 
light-weight of shrewd appearance, with one eye always 
shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all 
seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the livery 
stables on very little legs under a very large waistcoat, 
has gone to Doncaster. Of such undesigning aspect is 
his guileless Yard now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, 
and the yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a 
corner, that I almost believe I could not be taken in 
there, if I tried. In the places of business of the great 
tailors, the cheval-glasses are dim and dusty for lack of 
being looked into. Ranges of brown paper coat and 
waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if they were the 
hatchments of the customers with whose names they are 
inscribed ; the measuring tapes hang idle on the wall ; 
the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance of some one 
looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the books 
of patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining 
library. The hotels in Brook Street have no one in 
them, and the staffs of servants stare disconsolately for 


234 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


.next season out of all the windows. The very man who 
goes about like an erect Turtle, between two boards 
recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is 
aware of himself as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts 
while he leans his hinder shell against a wall. 

Among these tranquillizing objects, it is my delight to 
walk and meditate. Soothed by the repose around me, I 
wander insensibly to considerable distances, and guide 
myself back by the stars. Thus, I enjoy the contrast of 
a few still partially inhabited and busy spots where all 
the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are not 
dead, whence all but I have not departed. Then, does 
it appear to me that in this age three things are clamor- 
ously required of Man in the miscellaneous thoroughfares 
of the metropolis. Firstly, that he have his boots cleaned. 
Secondly, that he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get 
himself photographed. Then do I speculate, What have 
those seam-worn artists been who stand at the photo- 
graph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and myste- 
riously salute the public — the female public with a 
pressing tenderness — to come in and be “ took ” ? What 
did they do with their greasy blandishments, before the 
era of cheap photography ? Of what class were their 
previous victims, and how victimized ? And how did 
they get, and how did they pay for, that large collection 
of likenesses, all purporting to have been taken inside, 
with the taking of none of which had that establishment 
any more to do than with the taking of Delhi ? 

But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again 
in metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much 
of its serene and peaceful character is attributable to the 
absence of customary Talk. How do I know but there 
may be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls of men 


TALK. 


235 


who don’t hear it ? How do I know but that Talk, five, 
ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air and disagree 
with me ? If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and 
wearied and sick of my life, in the session of Parliament, 
who shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend 
friend, my right honorable friend, my honorable friend, 
my honorable and learned friend, or my honorable and 
gallant friend, may not be responsible for that effect 
upon my nervous system ? Too much Ozone in the air, 
I am informed and fully believe (though I have no idea 
what it is), would affect me in a marvellously disagree- 
able way ; why may not too much Talk ? I don’t see or 
hear the Ozone ; I don’t see or hear the Talk. And 
there is so much Talk ; so much too much ; such loud 
cry, and such scant supply of wool ; such a deal of fleec- 
ing, and so little fleece ! Hence, in the Arcadian sea- 
son, I find it a delicious triumph to walk down to deserted 
Westminster, and see the Courts shut up; to walk a 
little further and see the Two Houses shut up ; to stand 
in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the grand 
English History (concerning which unfortunate man, a 
whole rookery of mares’ nests is generally being dis- 
covered), and gloat upon the ruins of Talk. Returning 
to my primitive solitude and lying down to sleep, my 
grateful heart expands with the consciousness that there 
is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial explanation, no- 
body to give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord 
at the head of her Majesty’s Government five-and- twenty 
bootless questions in one, no term-time with legal ar- 
gument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal to British 
Jury ; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and 
to-morrow, remain untroubled by this superabundant 
generating of Talk. In a minor degree it is a delicious 


236 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


triumph to me to go into the club, and see the carpets 
up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to the 
four winds. Again New Zealander-like, I stand on the 
cold hearth, and say in the solitude, “ Here I watched 
Bore A 1, with voice always mysteriously low and head 
always mysteriously drooped, whispering political secrets 
into the ears of Adam’s confiding children. Accursed 
be his memory forever and a day ! ” 

But, I have all this time been coming to the point, 
that the happy nature of my retirement is most sweetly 
expressed in its being the abode of Love. It is, as it 
were, an inexpensive Agapemone : nobody’s speculation : 
everybody’s profit. The one great result of the resump- 
tion of primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not 
having much to do, is, the abounding of Love. 

The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions ; 
probably, in that low nomadic race, the softer emotions 
have all degenerated into flue. But, with this exception, 
all the sharers of my retreat make love. 

I have mentioned Saville Bow. We all know the Doc- 
tor’s servant. We all know w T hat a respectable man he 
is, what a hard dry man, what a firm man, what a con- 
fidential man: how he lets us into the waiting-room, 
like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with 
us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. 
In the prosaic “ season,” he has distinctly the appearance 
of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and 
taking his stand on his respectability with both feet. At 
that time it is as impossible to associate him with relaxa- 
tion, or any human weakness, as it is to meet his eye 
without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest Ar- 
cadian time, how changed ! I have seen him, in a pep- 
per-and-salt jacket — jacket — and drab trousers, with 


DENTISTS’ AND DOCTORS’ SERVANTS. 


237 


his arm round the waist of a bootmaker’s housemaid, 
smiling in open day. I have seen him at the pump by 
the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young 
creatures, whose figures as they bent over their cans, 
were — if I may be allowed an original expression — 
a model for the sculptor. I have seen him trying the 
piano in the Doctor’s drawing-room with his forefinger, 
and have heard him humming tunes in praise of lovely 
woman. I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and 
going (obviously in search of excitement) to a fire. I 
saw him, one moonlight evening when the peace and 
purity of our Arcadian west were at their height, polk 
with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of gloves, from the 
door-steps of his own residence, across Saville Row, round 
by Clifford Street and Old Burlington Street, back to 
Burlington Gardens. Is this the Golden Age revived, 
or Iron London ? 

The Dentist’s servant. Is that man no mystery to us, 
no type of invisible power ? The tremendous individual 
knows (who else does ?) what is done with the extracted 
teeth ; he knows what goes on in the little room where 
something is always being washed or filed; he knows 
what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable 
tumbler from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with 
a gap in it that feels a foot wide ; he knows whether the 
thing we spit into" is a fixture communicating with the 
Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance ; he sees 
the horrible parlor when there are no patients in it, and 
he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every- 
Day Book then. The conviction of my coward con- 
science when I see that man in a professional light, is, 
that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my 
double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my 


238 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as 
of a harmless powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who 
adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a 
neighboring billiard-room, and whose passion would be 
uninfluenced if every one of her teeth were false. They 
may be. He takes them all on trust. 

In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there 
are little shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and nev- 
er two together, where servants’ perquisites are bought. 
The cook may dispose of grease at these modest and con- 
venient marts ; the butler, of bottles ; the valet and lady’s 
maid, of clothes ; most servants, indeed, of most things 
they may happen to lay hold of. I have been told that 
in sterner times loving correspondence otherwise inter- 
dicted may be maintained by letter through the agency 
of some of these useful establishments. In the Arca- 
dian autumn, no such device is necessary. Everybody 
loves, and openly and blamelessly loves. My landlord’s 
young man loves the whole of one side of the way of old 
Bond Street, and is beloved several doors up new Bond 
Street besides. I never look out of window but I see 
kissing of hands going on all around me. It is the 
morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange 
tender sentiments ; it is the evening custom for couples 
to stand hand in hand at house-doors, or roam, linked 
in that flowery manner, through the unpeopled streets. 
There is nothing else to do but love ; and what there 
is to do, is done. 

In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains 
in the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered 
people dine early, live moderately, sup socially, and sleep 
soundly. It is rumored that the Beadles of the Arcade, 
from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with 


GOLDEN AGE NOT LASTING. 


23<1 


tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to 
a ragged school. No wonder ! For, they might turn their 
heavy maces into crooks and tend sheep in the Arcade, 
to the purling of the water-carts as they give the thirsty 
streets much more to drink than they can carry. 

A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity. 
Charming picture, but it will fade. The iron age will 
return, London will come back to town, if I show my 
tongue then in Saville Row for half a minute I shall be 
prescribed for, the Doctor’s man and the Dentist’s man 
will then pretend that these days of unprofessional inno- 
cence never existed. Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and 
their bed will be at that time, passes human knowledge ; 
but, my hatter hermitage will then know them no more, 
nor will it then know me. The desk at which I have 
written these meditations will retributively assist at the 
making out of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous 
carriages and the hoofs of high-stepping horses will 
crush the silence out of Bond Street — will grind Arca- 
dia away, and give it to the elements in granite powder. 


240 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 


XVII. 

THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 

The rising of the Italian people from under their un 
utterable wrongs, and the tardy burst of day upon them 
after the long long night of oppression that has darkened 
their beautiful country, has naturally caused my mind to 
dwell often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy. 
Connected with them is a curious little drama, in which 
the character I myself sustained was so very subordinate, 
that I may relate its story without any fear of being sus- 
pected of self-display. It is strictly a true story. 

I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain 
small town on the Mediterranean. I have had my dinner 
at the inn, and I and the mosquitoes are coming out into 
the streets together. It is far from Naples ; but a bright 
brown plump little woman-servant at the inn, is a Nea- 
politan, and is so vivaciously expert in pantomimic action 
that in the single moment of answering my request to 
have a pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, 
she plies imaginary brushes, and goes completely through 
the motions of polishing the shoes up, and laying them 
at my feet. I smile at the brisk little w'oman in perfect 
satisfaction with her briskness ; and the brisk little wom- 
an, amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with 
her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in 
the inn-yard. As the little woman’s bright eyes sparkle 
on the cigarette I am smoking, I make bold to offer her 


GIOVANNI CARLAVERO. 


241 


one ; she accepts it none the less merrily, because 1 
touch a most charming little dimple in her fat cheek, 
with its light paper end. Glancing up at the many 
green lattices to assure herself that the mistress is not 
looking on, the little woman then puts her two little 
dimpled arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her 
cigarette at mine. “And now, dear little sir,” says she, 
puffing out smoke in a most innocent and Cherubic man- 
ner, “ keep quite straight on, take the first to the right, 
and probably you will see him standing at his door.” 

I have a commission to “ him,” and I have been in- 
quiring about him. I have carried the commission about 
Italy, several months. Before I left England, there came 
to me one night a certain generous and gentle English 
nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate the 
story, and exiles have lost their best British friend), 
with this request : “ Whenever you come to such a town, 
will you seek out one Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a 
little wine-shop there, mention my name to him suddenly, 
and observe how it affects him ? ” I accepted the trust, 
and am on my way to discharge it. 

The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot 
unwholesome evening with no cool sea-breeze. Mosqui- 
toes and fire-flies are lively enough, but most other crea- 
tures are faint. The coquettish airs of pretty young 
women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls’ straw hats, 
who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost the 
only airs stirring. Very ugly and haggard old women 
with distaffs, and with a gray tow upon them that looks 
as if they were spinning out their own hair (I suppose 
they were once pretty, too, but it is very difficult to be- 
lieve so), sit on the footway leaning against house-walls. 
Everybody who has come for water to the fountain, stays 
16 


242 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

there, and seems incapable of any such energetic idea as 
going home. Vespers are over, though not so long but 
that I can smell the heavy resinous incense as 1 pass the 
church. No man seems to be at work, save the copper- 
smith. In an Italian town he is always at work, and 
always thumping in the deadliest manner. 

I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first 
on the right : a narrow dull street, where I see a well- 
favored man of good stature and military bearing, in a 
great cloak, standing at a door. Drawing nearer to this 
threshold, I see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop ; 
and I can just make out, in the dim light, the inscription 
that it is kept by Giovanni Carlavero. 

I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, 
and draw a stool to a little table. The lamp (just such 
another as they dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the 
place is empty. The figure in the cloak has followed me 
in, and stands before me. 

“ The master ? ” 

“ At your service, sir.” 

u Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.” 

He turns to a little counter to get it. As his striking 
face is pale, and his action is evidently that of an en- 
feebled man, I remark that I fear he has been ill. It is 
not much, he courteously and gravely answers, though 
bad while it lasts : the fever. 

As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest 
surprise I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in 
the face, and say in a low voice : “ I am an Englishman, 
and you are acquainted with a friend of mine. Do you 
recollect ? ” and I mention the name of my gener- 

ous countryman. 

Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and 


A POLITICAL PRISONER. 


243 


falls on his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both 
his arms and bowing his head to the ground. 

Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over- 
fraught heart is heaving as if it would burst from his 
breast, and whose tears are wet upon the dress I wear, 
was a galley-slave in the North of Italy. He was a 
political offender, having been concerned in the then last 
rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. That 
he would have died in his chains, is certain, but for the 
circumstance that the Englishman happened to visit his 
prison. 

It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part 
of it was below the waters of the harbor. The place of 
his confinement was an arched underground and under- 
water gallery, with a grill-gate at the entrance, through 
which it received such light and air as it got. Its con- 
dition was insufferably foul, and a stranger could hardly 
breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch. At the 
upper end of this dungeon, and consequently in the 
worst position, as being the furthest removed from light 
and air, the Englishman first beheld him, sitting on an 
iron bedstead to which he was chained by a heavy chain. 
His countenance impressed the Englishman as having 
nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors 
with whom he was associated, and he talked with him, 
and learnt how he came to be there. 

When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den 
into the light of day, he asked his conductor, the gov- 
ernor of the jail, why Giovanni Carlavero was put into 
the worst place ? 

“ Because he is particularly recommended,” was the 
stringent answer. 

“ Recommended, that is to say, for death ? ” 


244 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


(t Excuse me ; particularly recommended,' ” was again 
the answer. 

“ He has a bad tumor in his neck, no doubt occasioned 
by the hardship of his miserable life. If it continues to 
be neglected, and he remains where he is, it will kill 
him.” 

“ Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly 
recommended.” 

The Englishman was staying in that town, and he 
went to his home there ; but the figure of this man 
chained to the bedstead made it no home, and destroyed 
his rest and peace. He was an Englishman of an ex- 
traordinarily tender heart, and he could not bear the 
picture. He went back to the prison grate ; went back 
again and again, and talked to the man and cheered him. 
He used his utmost influence to get the man unchained 
from the bedstead, were it only for ever so short a time 
in the day, and permitted to come to the grate. It took 
a long time, but the Englishman’s station, personal char- 
acter, and steadiness of purpose, wore out opposition so 
far, and that grace was at last accorded. Through the 
bars, when he could thus get light upon the tumor, the 
Englishman lanced it, and it did well, and healed. His 
strong interest in the prisoner had greatly increased by 
this time, and he formed the desperate resolution that he 
would exert his utmost self-devotion and use his utmost 
efforts, to get Carlavero pardoned. 

If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if 
he had committed every non-political crime in the New- 
gate Calendar and out %£ k, nothing would have been 
easier than for a man of any court or priestly influence 
to obtain his release. As it was, nothing could have been 
more difficult. Italian authorities, and English authori- 


QUIXOTIC. 


245 


ties who had interest with them, alike assured the Eng- 
lishman that his object was hopeless. He met with 
nothing but evasion, refusal, and ridicule. His political 
prisoner became a joke in the place. It was especially 
observable that English Circumlocution, and English 
Society on its travels, were as humorous on the subject 
as Circumlocution and Society may be on any subject 
without loss of caste. But the Englishman possessed 
(and proved it well in his life) a courage very uncommon 
among us : he had not the least fear of being considered 
a bore, in a good humane cause. So he went on persist- 
ently trying, and trying, and trying, to get Giovanni 
Carlavero out. That prisoner had been rigorously re- 
chained, after the tumor operation, and it was not likely 
that his miserable life could last very long. 

One day, when all the town knew about the English- 
man and his political prisoner, there came to the English- 
man a certain sprightly Italian Advocate, of whom he 
had some knowledge ; and he made this strange proposal. 
“ Give me a hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero’s re- 
lease. I think I can get him a pardon, with that money. 
But I cannot tell you what I am going to do with the 
money, nor must you ever ask me the question if I suc- 
ceed, nor must you ever ask me for an account of the 
money if I fail.” The Englishman decided to hazard the 
hundred pounds. He did so, and heard not another 
word of the matter. For half a year and more, the Ad- 
vocate made no sign, and never once “ took on ” in any 
way, to have the subject on his mind. The Englishman 
was then obliged to change his residence to another and 
more famous town in the North of Italy. He parted 
from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a 
doomed man for whom there was no release but Death. 


246 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


The Englishman lived in his new place of abode 
another half-year and more, and had no tidings of the 
wretched prisoner. At length, one day, he received from 
the Advocate a cool concise mysterious note, to this 
effect. u If you still wish to bestow that benefit upon the 
man in whom you were once interested, send me fifty 
pounds more, and I think it can be ensured.” Now, the 
Englishman had long settled in his mind that the Advo- 
cate was a heartless sharper, who had preyed upon his 
credulity and his interest in an unfortunate sufferer. So, 
he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the Advocate 
to understand that he was wiser now than he had been 
formerly, and that no more money was extractable from 
his pocket. 

He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from 
the post-office, and was accustomed to walk into the city 
with his letters and post them himself. On a lovely 
spring day, when the sky was exquisitely blue, and the 
sea Divinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, carrying 
this letter to the Advocate in his pocket. As he went 
along, his gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness 
of the prospect, and by the thought of the slowly-dying 
prisoner chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe 
had no delights. As he drew nearer and nearer to the 
city where he was to post the letter, he became very 
uneasy in his mind. He debated with himself, was it 
remotely possible, after all, that this sum of fifty pounds 
could restore the fellow-creature whom he pitied so much, 
and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty ? He 
was not a conventionally rich Englishman — very far 
from that — but he had a spare fifty pounds at the bank- 
er’s. He resolved to risk it. Without doubt, God has 
recompensed him for the resolution. 


LIBERATED. 


247 


He went to the banker’s, and got a bill for the amount, 
and enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I 
could have seen. He simply told the Advocate that he 
was quite a poor man, and that he was sensible it might 
be a great weakness in him to part with so much money 
on the faith of so vague a communication ; but, that 
there it was, and that he prayed the Advocate to make- 
a good use of it. If he did otherwise no good could 
ever come of it, and it would lie heavy on his soul one 
day. 

Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his 
breakfast, when he heard some suppressed sounds of 
agitation on the staircase, and Giovanni Carlavero leaped 
into the room and fell upon his breast, a free man ! 

Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own 
thoughts, the Englishman wrote him an earnest and 
grateful letter, avowing the fact, and entreating him to 
confide by what means and through what agency he had 
succeeded so well. The Advocate returned for answer 
through the post. “There are many things, as you 
know, in this Italy of ours, that are safest and best 
not even spoken of — far less written of. We may meet 
some day, and then I may tell you what you want to 
know ; not here, and now.” But the two never did meet 
again. The Advocate was dead when the Englishman 
gave me my trust ; and how the man had been set free, 
remained as great a mystery to the Englishman, and to 
the man himself, as it was to me. 

But, I knew this : — here was the man, this sultry 
night, on his knees at my feet, because I was the English- 
man’s friend ; here were his tears upon my dress ; here 
were his sobs choking his utterance ; here were his kisses 
on my hands, because they had touched the hands that 


248 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


had worked out his release. He had no need to tell me 
it would be happiness to him to die for his benefactor ; 
I doubt if I ever saw real, sterling, fervent gratitude of 
soul, before or since. 

He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had 
had enough to do to keep himself out of trouble. This, 
and his not having prospered in his worldly affairs, had 
led to his having failed in his usual communications to 
the Englishman for — as I now remember the period — 
some two or three years. But his prospects were brighter, 
and his wife who had been very ill had recovered, and 
his fever had left him, and he had bought a little vine- 
yard, and would I carry to his benefactor the first of its 
wine? Ay, that I would (I told him with enthusiasm), 
and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost ! 

He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of 
himself, and had talked with such excess of emotion, and 
in a provincial Italian so difficult to understand, that I 
had more than once been obliged to stop him, and beg 
him to have compassion on me and be slower and calmer. 
By degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back 
with me to the hotel. There, I sat down before I went 
to bed and wrote a faithful account of him to the Eng- 
lishman: which I concluded by saying that I would bring 
the wine home, against any difficulties, every drop. 

Early next morning when I came out at the hotel- 
door to pursue my journey, I found my friend waiting 
with one of those immense bottles in which the Italian 
peasants store their wine — a bottle holding some half- 
dozen gallons — bound round with basket-work for greater 
safety on the journey. I see him now, in the bright sun- 
light, tears of gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my 
attention to this corpulent bottle. (At the street-corner 


THE BOTTLE. 


249 


hard by, two high-flavored able-bodied monks — pre- 
tending to talk together, but keeping their four evil eyes 
upon us.) 

How the bottle had been got there, did not appear ; 
but, the difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vet- 
turino carriage in which I was departing, was so great, 
and it took up so much room when it was got in, that I 
elected to sit outside. The last I saw of Giovanni Car- 
la vero was his running through the town by the side of 
the jingling wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it 
down from the box, charging me with a thousand last 
loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron, and finally 
looking in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an ad- 
miration of its honorable way of travelling that was be- 
yond measure delightful. 

And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved 
and highly-treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man 
knows. It was my precious charge through a long tour, 
and, for hundreds of miles, I never had it off my mind 
by day or by night. Over bad roads — and they w r ere 
many — I clung to it with affectionate desperation. Up 
mountains, I looked in at it and saw it helplessly tilting 
over on its back, with terror. At innumerable inn-doors 
when the weather was bad, I was obliged to be put into 
my vehicle before the Bottle could be got in, and was 
obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before human aid 
could come near me. The Imp of the same name, except 
that his associations were all evil and these associations 
were all good, would have been a less troublesome travel- 
ling companion. I might have served Mr. Cruikshank 
as a subject for a new illustration of the miseries of the 
Bottle. The National Temperance Society might have 
made a powerful Tract of me. 


250 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle, 
greatly aggravated my difficulties. It was like the apple- 
pie in the child’s book. Parma pouted at it, Modena 
mocked it, Tuscany tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome 
refused it, Austria accused it, Soldiers suspected it, 
Jesuits jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, develop- 
ing my inoffensive intentions in connection with this 
Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of guard-houses, at 
a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, 
angle, and rampart of a complete system of fortifications. 
Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated 
soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degrada- 
tion of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much 
difficulty in working my way with the Bottle as if it had 
bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In 
the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a 
soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of 
all four denominations incessantly pounced on the Bot- 
tle and made it a pretext for extorting money from me. 
Quires — quires do I say ? Reams — of forms illegibly 
printed on whity-brown paper were filled up about the 
Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping and 
sanding than I had ever seen before. In consequence of 
which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular, and 
always latent with dismal penalties of going back or not 
going forward, which were only to be abated by the sil- 
ver crossing of a base hand, poked shirtless out of a rag- 
ged uniform sleeve. Under all discouragements, how- 
ever, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution 
that every drop of its contents should reach the Bottle’s 
destination. 

The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troub- 
les on its own separate account. What corkscrews did 


TRAVELS OF THE BOTTLE. 


251 


I see the military power bring out against that Bottle : 
what gimlets, spikes, divining rods, gauges, and unknown 
tests and instruments ! At some places, they persisted 
in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without 
being opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, 
used then to argue the question seated on the Bottle lest 
they should open it in spite of me. In the southern 
parts of Italy, more violent shrieking, face-making, and 
gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech and counte- 
nance and action, went on about that Bottle, than would 
attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It raised 
important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of 
night. I have known half a dozen military lanterns to 
disperse themselves at all points of a great sleeping 
Piazza, each lantern summoning some official creature to 
get up, put on his cocked hat instantly, and come and 
stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that while this 
innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting 
from little town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery 
cross were traversing Italy from end to end. 

Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English 
gentleman all of the olden time. The more the Bottle 
was interfered with, the stancher I became (if possible) 
in my first determination that my countryman should 
have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom he had 
so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it to 
me. If ever I had been obstinate in my days — and 
I may have been, say, once or twice — I was obstinate 
about the Bottle. But I made it a rule always to keep 
a pocket full of small coin at its service, and never to be 
out of temper in its cause. Thus, I and the Bottle made 
our way. Once, we had a break-down ; rather a bad 
break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below 


252 


THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 


us, on a tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. 
We were driving four wild horses abreast, Southern 
fashion, and there was some little difficulty in stopping 
them. I was outside, and not thrown off ; but no words 
can describe my feelings when I saw the Bottle — trav- 
elling inside, as usual — burst the door open, and roll 
obesely out into the road. A blessed Bottle with a 
charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we repaired 
damage, and went on triumphant. 

A thousand representations were made to me that the 
Bottle must be left at this place or that, and called for 
again. I never yielded to one of them, and never parted 
from the Bottle, on any pretence, consideration, threat, 
or entreaty. I had no faith in any official receipt for the 
Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one. 
These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the 
Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa. There, I took a ten- 
der and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and con- 
signed him to a trusty English captain, to be conveyed to 
the Port of London by sea. 

While the Bottle w r as on his voyage to England, I 
read the Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if I had 
been an underwriter. There was some stormy weather 
after I myself had got to England by way of Switzerland 
and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the 
Bottle might be wrecked. At last to my great joy, I 
received notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went 
down to Saint Katharine’s Docks, and found him in a 
State of honorable captivity in the Custom House. 

The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before 
the generous Englishman — probably it had been some- 
thing like vinegar when T took it up from Giovanni 
Carlavero — - but not a drop of it was spilled or gone. 


SAFE ARRIVAL OF THE BOTTLE. 


253 


And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his 
face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed 
to him so sweet and sound. And long afterwards, the 
Bottle graced his table. And the last time I saw him 
in this world that misses him, he took me aside in a 
crowd, to say, with his amiable smile : “ We were talk- 
ing of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had 
been there, for I had some claret up in Carlavero’s 
Bottle.” 


¥ 


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